Melania's parents are now U.S. citizens

[SteveG1]

@begbert2

I confess it’s crossed my mind that their applications for citizenship might have been quietly fasttracked so that embarassment could be avoided if/when Trump enacts some kind of pogrom on our less-fully-legal citizenry.

You get my point though. It’s HIGHpocrisy.

[gdave]

@Little_Nemo

I think you’re being naive if you either believe or expect other people to believe that the President can conduct a long-standing tirade against immigration and nobody, in his family or on his staff, ever mentioned that his wife’s parents were in the midst of the immigration process.

I neither believe, nor do I expect others to believe, that Donald Trump personally was unaware that his in-laws were in the midst of the immigration process. But, again, the Knavses and Donald Trump are separate people. For that matter, Donald and Melania Trump are separate people.

It’s not exactly unprecedented for someone’s in-laws to do something that their son-in-law disagrees with and finds embarrassing. It’s also not unprecedented for a wife to side with her parents on a private family issue against her husband. It’s also not unprecedented for a U.S. First Lady, who occupies a weird, quasi-public position, to privately disagree with the policies of her husband without doing so publicly.

If Melania Trump is on record as opposing chain migration in general, or chain migration for parents of U.S. citizens in particular, then she’s a hypocrite. If the Knavses are on record as having those views, they are hypocrites. If Donald Trump facilitated or encouraged the Knavses’ application for U.S. citizenship, or Melania’s sponsorship of same, then he’s a huge hypocrite.

As it stands, all of the available evidence suggests that private individuals pursued a perfectly reasonable, lawful course of action, which their son-in-law opposes as a matter of public policy. It’s certainly bad optics for President Trump and his immigration policies, but otherwise…

shrug

[Quartz]

@elbows

Can you picture the shitstorm that would have ensued should ANY, no matter how distant, Kenyan OBama relative have been (quite possibly as legally and routinely, as this event seems) granted citizenship during his Presidency?

Do you really think there would have been a shitstorm if said relatives had gone through the normal process in the normal time? There is no indication that the Knavs have not.

It’s hard not to laugh at the enormity of the hypocrisy sometimes, don’t you find?

Are you sure it’s not you being the hypocrite? Are you sure you’re not fulminating over nothing? You need to show evidence of fast-tracking or undue influence. There is - as yet - no indication of either. The Knavs have been in the US over a decade. They chased up their application for a Green Card several years ago. So they were legally in the US between those two times. Is a decade from initial entry to citizenship considered quick? Because it doesn’t seem quick to me.

[John_Mace]

Keep in mind that we’re talking about Slovenia, too. It’s not Norway, by any measure except maybe small population with a low birth rate, but it’s definitely well above “shit hole” status.

[Loach]

@Little_Nemo

That would be a credible theory is there was any evidence that the Trump administration was attempting to develop new avenues of legal immigration. But they aren’t. In point of fact, they have pushed for new restrictions on legal immigration to go alongside their push to oppose illegal immigration.

That comment was about optics and spin not reality.

[Gyrate]

@gdave

You imagine they would have a very different reaction in a hypothetical situation that you made up, so that makes them enormous, shameless, lying (or deluded) hypocrites?

:dubious:

No, I know they’re enormous, shameless, lying (or deluded) hypocrites based on actual reactions to actual events. Expecting them to continue to be enormous, shameless, lying (or deluded) hypocrites in a hypothetical situation is an assumption based on substantial prior experience.

[kaylasdad99]

@bobot

I say “Welcome in, the more the merrier.” Aside from that, it wouldn’t surprise me if those guys hated Trump, anyway.

Heh. Be a trip if the Knavs turn out to take their citizenship more seriously than their son-in-law does, and flip on him, releasing shit-tons of rock-solid evidence of his crimes that accidentally got mixed up in their luggage last time they visited Mar-a-Lago.

Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

[SteveG1]

@Gyrate

No, I know they’re enormous, shameless, lying (or deluded) hypocrites based on actual reactions to actual events. Expecting them to continue to be enormous, shameless, lying (or deluded) hypocrites in a hypothetical situation is an assumption based on substantial prior experience.

This. We call it Historical Data And Trend Analysis.