BREAKING: Donald Trump’s Wife, Melania, May Have Committed Visa Fraud

There’s hypocrisy, and then there’s hypocrisy so enormous that you have to use a capital “H.” But for this story we might just need all capital letters: HYPOCRISY.

Donald Trump is virulently anti-immigrant and xenophobic, yet it would now appear that his current wife, Melania, an immigrant from Slovenia, may have committed visa fraud when the came to the United States.

Politico reports that in January of this year Melania Trump said she frequently flew back to Slovenia to renew her H-1B visa. That same H-1B visa is the kind of document that Trump himself has said he would seek to eliminate if elected President. Melania even told Harper’s Bazaar:

“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.”

And therein lies the problem with Mrs. Trump’s story: An H-1B visa is valid for three years and can be extended for up to six years, so there was no reason for her to fly back to her home country for renewal.

It would seem that what Melania is talking about is a B-1 Temporary Business Visitor or B-2 Tourist Visa. If she was in the United States with such a visa and got work as a model, there is a chance she took a job away from a legal American citizen. Isn’t that the kind of thing her husband is always hollering about?

Andrew Greenfield, an attorney who specializes in immigration law, said of the Melania Trump situation:

“If you enter the United States with the intention of working without authorization and you present yourself to a border agent at an airport or a seaport or a manned border and request a visa, even if there is not a Q&A — knowing that you are coming to work — you are implicitly, if not explicitly, manifesting that you intend to comply with the parameters of the visa classification for which you sought entry and were granted entry.”

Another immigration law attorney echoed Greenfield’s comments:

“She would not have been authorized to work in the U.S. while on a B-1 visa. In fact, if a customs agent encounters someone entering the U.S. on a B-1 visa and they know that the individual intends to work for a U.S. employer, the individual will usually be denied admission. In order to avoid being sent back to Slovenia, she may have had to lie about the purpose of her trip.”

Bottom line: Melania Trump may have committed visa fraud. And if she did, she is guilty of a serious federal crime which would call into question her green-card status and the very legality of her United States citizenship.

So the question for the Trump campaign now becomes: How do you manage to explain all of this in light of the fact that the GOP nominee has already proven he lies about everything? Seems like perhaps his wife does, too.

This article was originally published by the same author at Liberal America.org

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