Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not immediately respond to detailed questions from The Associated Press about the review and whether Mrs. Trump planned to release her immigration file for public examination. The immigration file is one of several documents that the Trumps have refused to make public including Donald Trump’s tax returns.
In his letter, Wildes dismissed news reports that Mrs. Trump had been professionally photographed posing nude in New York City in 1995.
Last month, the New York Post published the photos along with an article saying they were taken during a two-day photo shoot in Manhattan in 1995. The Post reported that the photos were then published in the January 1996 issue of the French magazine Max. But Wildes said that then-Melania Knauss was not in the country in 1995.
“The allegation that she participated in a photo shoot in 1995 is not only untrue, it is impossible,” Wildes wrote. He said he interviewed Mrs. Trump and “we ascertained that the photo shoot in question did not occur until after she was admitted to the United States in H-1B visa status in October 1996.” The letter does not give more detail on when Mrs. Trump said the photo shoot occurred.
Wildes wrote that Mrs. Trump first entered the U.S. on Aug. 27, 1996, using a B-1/B-2 visitor visa. About two months later, on Oct. 18, 1996, Wildes said the U.S. Embassy in Slovenia issued Mrs. Trump her first worker visa, an H-1B visa, which she used to work as a model. Wildes said she was issued five such visas between October 1996 and 2001, at which point she became a lawful permanent resident. Wildes said he did not represent Mrs. Trump during the process.
Wildes wrote that Mrs. Trump did not receive her green card through marriage. Instead, she applied in 2000 by self-sponsoring herself as a model of “extraordinary ability,” he said. She received her green card on March 19, 2001, and became eligible for citizenship in 2006, the year Mrs. Trump has said she became a citizen.
Simon Rosenberg, an immigration policy analyst who supports Hillary Clinton, said he’s skeptical about Mrs. Trump’s ability to qualify for self-sponsorship as described in Wildes’ letter. Rosenberg, the president of NDN/New Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said, “The letter resolves nothing.”
“If they have all the documents, then release them. It is the only way we can answer the fundamental question here which is whether Melania Trump followed immigration law,” he said.
William Stock, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said Wildes’ description of Mrs. Trump’s immigration history “is consistent with immigration law, as I know it,” though he noted the date of the photo shoot is an outstanding question.
The qualification to self-sponsor to receive a green card is that a person must show extraordinary ability and national or international renown. Stock said an immigrant seeking this type of green card “can be extraordinary in anything,” including modeling, and that the strength of a person’s reputation can be part of that proof.
Stock said Mrs. Trump or any other immigrant in the same situation would have been measured by the standards in their chosen field.
