Newly published nude photographs
of Melania Trump, the wife of Republican presidential candidate Donald
Trump, have raised questions about the story of her immigration to the
United States and how the Slovenian-born former model gained her legal
status here — questions that the Trump campaign is not answering.
Melania
Trump has said she came to the country in 1996, but the photos were
taken in New York in 1995. She met Donald Trump in 1998 and they were
married in 2005. So what do we know about how Melania Trump came to the
United States?
Q: What has Melania said about her immigration?
A: Melania
Trump has said she came to the United States on a legal visa in 1996,
got a green card in 2001 and then became a U.S. citizen in 2006.
“I
came here for my career,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in January. “I did
so well. I moved here. It never crossed my mind to stay here without
papers. That is just the person you are. You follow the rules. You
follow the law. Every few months you need to fly back to Europe and
stamp your visa. After a few visas, I applied for a green card and got
it in 2001. After the green card, I applied for citizenship. And it was a
long process.”
Then, in
February, she told MSNBC: “I follow a law the way it’s supposed to be. I
never thought to stay here without papers. I had visa. I travel every
few months back to the country, to Slovenia, to stamp the visa. I came
back. I applied for the green card. I applied for the citizenship later
on after many years of green card. So I went by system. I went by the
law, and you should do that.”
On Thursday, Melania Trump tweeted an additional explanation — but no additional details:
“Let
me set the record straight,” she wrote. “I have at all times been in
full compliance with the immigration laws of this country. Period.”
Q: Who sponsored Melania to come to the United States? What kind of visa did she hold?
A: The
Trump campaign has been vague. This week, Trump campaign spokeswoman
Hope Hicks responded to a list of detailed questions of Melania Trump’s
immigration status with only one line: “Melania followed the laws and is
now a proud United States citizen.”
Most
of what we know about how she first came to the United States comes
from Paolo Zampolli, an Italian-born businessman based in New York who
once owned modeling agencies.
He
told The Washington Post this week that his agency, Metropolitan
Models, sponsored Melania Knauss for an H-1B work visa in 1996 after he
spotted her while scouting models in Milan and Paris. Working models are
eligible for an H-1B if they can show “distinguished merit or ability”
in their field. Zampolli said Melania Knauss qualified based on her past
work as a model in Europe.
Q: So she has said she came in 1996?
A: Yes,
multiple times. Her official biography in the program of the Republican
National Convention in Cleveland last week indicated she came to the
U.S. in 1996. So did her biography on the Trump Organization website.
That page was recently taken down after it emerged that a line
indicating that Melania Trump had earned a college degree at a Slovenian
university was false; she studied at the school before dropping out to
pursue modeling in Paris and Milan.
Q: But the nude photographs were taken in New York City in 1995?
A: Correct.
The photographs originally appeared in the French magazine Max and were
published again in the New York Post last weekend. Marc Dolisi, chief
editor of Max at the time, told The Washington Post that the pictures
appeared in the February 1996 edition of the magazine and had been shot
in November or December of 1995. Jarl Ale de Basseville, the
photographer, said the shoot was conducted in New York.
Q: How can the discrepancy be explained?
A: Only
Melania Trump can explain the discrepancy, which was first reported by
Politico. The campaign has not responded to questions asking how those
photos could be shot in 1995 if Melania Trump arrived in 1996.
Q: So does that mean Melania Trump was in the United States illegally in 1995?
A: It’s
not clear. Dolisi and de Basseville both told The Washington Post that
Melania Trump was not compensated for the Max magazine photo shoot. She
was a relatively unknown model at the time. Taking part in magazine
photo spreads for free is common for models at that level because the
exposure can help them secure commercial work.
Q: Why is it important that Trump was not paid?
A: Without
pay, she could have been here legally on a visitor’s visa. Foreigners
coming to the United States for brief stays can obtain B1 or B2
visitor’s visas allowing them to stay in the United States as either a
tourist or a visiting businessperson attending a meeting or other work
event. It is, however, illegal to work in the United States on a
visitor’s visa; that kind of illegal work has tripped up many other
people who wish to legally immigrate to the U.S. People being issued a
visitor’s visa are asked both at an embassy or consulate abroad and at
the airport upon arrival whether they intend to work. If they come to
the U.S. planning to work and claim otherwise, that’s immigration fraud.
It is unclear, however, if she got any other kind of compensation during her 1995 stay, such as airfare and lodging.
Q: Did Melania Trump ever come to the United States on a visitor’s visa?
A: We don’t know. The Trump campaign has not answered this question.
Q: Did Melania Trump do any other work in the United States prior to 1996?
A: We don’t know. The Trump campaign has not answered this question.
When
she first arrived in the United States, Melania Trump shared an
apartment for a time with Matthew Atalian, a photographer who was
friendly with Paolo Zampolli. In an interview, he said she moved in
either in 1995 or in 1996 and lived with him for about a year and a
half. He said he agreed to let her move in with him at the request of
Zampolli, who paid her rent. His understanding at the time, he said, was
that she was “fresh” to the United States.
Q: Melania
Trump described having to return to Slovenia every few months to get
her visa stamped, citing her willingness to undertake these trips as a
commitment to complying with U.S. immigration law. Why did she need to
do this?
A: We don’t know. The Trump campaign would not answer this question.
Immigration
experts said that people who receive H1-B visas typically receive them
for three years and are able to renew them for another three years. They
expressed some confusion as to why Melania Trump would need to
periodically return to Slovenia if she held an H-1B visa. However,
several said there are reasons why the specifics of her situation might
have required it. Only Melania Trump could describe her own experience.
Q: How did Melania Trump get a green card?
A: We don’t know. The Trump campaign would not answer this question.
A
green card allows a foreigner to permanently reside in the United
States. It is the golden ticket of the U.S. immigration system and
highly sought after by millions of immigrants.
There
are several avenues Melania Trump could have pursued to get a green
card. She could have won a lottery for people who immigrate from
countries that don’t have high immigration rates to the United States.
She
could have sought a green card as a person of extraordinary ability,
though experts cast doubt that she had been sufficiently successful in
her modeling career to qualify in this category.
She
could have been sponsored for a green card by an employer who made a
case that there were no Americans available to fill a particular job.
That process is not easy; it requires the employer to show that they
have attempted to fill the job, by advertising it publicly. Michael
Wildes, an immigration lawyer who has done work for the Miss Universe
pageant and the Trump Organization, said his firm will typically not
help models pursue this kind of green card, as it is too difficult to
show that a modeling job could not be filled by an American. He said,
however, that models can sometimes qualify for a green card on these
grounds by seeking employment in a different field for which they are
also qualified, like graphic design. Wildes said he did not have
permission from the Trump Organization to comment on any specific case,
including Melania Trump’s.
Immigrants
can also obtain a green card through marriage. Melania and Donald Trump
were married in a very public ceremony in 2005, four years after she
has said she obtained her green card.
Q: Shouldn’t there be some documents available that would shed light here?
A: Certainly.
But experts said Melania Trump’s immigration records would typically
not be available for public release without her permission. The
Washington Post asked Hicks to release copies of these records; she did
not respond to this question.
Q: Isn’t
it hypocritical for the Trump campaign not to answer these questions,
given that Trump has made cracking down on illegal immigration the
centerpiece of his campaign? And given that he waged a very public
campaign to insist that President Obama release a copy of his birth
certificate to prove that he was born in the United States?
In
March, Donald Trump said he was “totally committed to eliminating
rampant, widespread H-1B abuse and ending outrageous practices such as
those that occurred at Disney. I will end forever the use of H-IB as a
cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire
American workers first.”
A: That’s a question for the voters.
Alice Crites contributed to this report.