Two news reports appeared recently — one in The Washington Post (March 1, 2018) and the another in The New York Times (March 4, 2018) — with the following headline in the former: “Questions linger about how Melania Trump, a Slovenian model, scored the ‘Einstein visa.’”
Three days after, The New York Times published a follow-up, quoting directly the Post’s story and featuring the headline “Did Melania Trump merit an ‘Einstein visa’? Probably, immigration lawyers say.” There, the process of getting the EB-1 visa for groundbreaking work in a specific field was dissected to reveal that Ms. Trump might have won it fair and square due to her prominent and profitable modeling career.
The investigation made by The Post was legitimate and relevant. Due to Melania’s status as a public figure and the necessity to discuss her husband’s hypocritical immigration policies, it is important for the public to know how she got to the United States. However, the way The Post chose to do it shows a problem that evokes two different oppressed identities Ms. Trump has to deal with: she is not only an immigrant, she is also a woman. As Audre Lorde famously said, there are no hierarchies of oppression. All discourses of dominance are intertwined and should always be seen as such. The attacks on Ms. Trump are simultaneously an attack on women, who are constantly deemed as incapable of taking care of their own lives (so what if she is a model?), and on immigrants who are portrayed as a mischievous, ambitious “other.”
There are at least 25 books in American literature, ranging from Mariana Zapata’s “The Wall of Winnipeg and Me” to Billy London’s “Kissing the Canvas,” and twenty high-ranging audiovisual narratives about an immigrant marrying a citizen for a green card. In all of those, the immigrant’s initiative comes from a place of despair that eventually develops into marriage – sometimes, they even trick their spouses into proposing!
Whenever a Washington Post reporter decides to tell a story about the second non-US born the first lady (and may there be many more), it is a very political choice to infer that she tricked the system because of who she is and not based on the evidence against her. Despite showing additional research during the story, the clickbait title of the news points to a damaging image that affects immigrant women far beyond Ms. Trump. Whoever laughs at Melania Trump’s status and how she really did everything for a green card dehumanizes all immigrants, in all situations, and could be quick to think someone they know did the same.
What I’m discussing here is not Trump himself, or the events behind Ms. Trump's citizenship process, but the hypocritical attitude of groups mobilized for democracy who do not take into consideration the psychosocial consequences of talking bluntly of members of groups they apparently defend. An Immigrant is also a daughter or son, a friend, a brother or sister, a professional, and assumptions of guilt can affect these relationships.
Below the Washington Post’s logo lies, as recently as February 21st, the phrase “Democracy dies in darkness.” If democracy lives in light, it is a media maker’s responsibility to bring a range of narratives to the surface, especially when it comes to a targeted minority such as immigrants. There are cases of marriage fraud and of manipulation of innocent Americans, for sure, but they do not compare to the number of beautiful love stories the majority of immigrants and non-immigrants have to tell.
Every case should be looked at closely and carefully and even those who committed a crime in the eyes of the law should be heard – for every time someone risks everything to move away from their home, it is a testament that that system failed. Our will to punish a person should not be bigger than the will to, in the most human way, understand why they did it.
When media portray, through fiction or non-fiction, the immigrant as one desperate “alien,” someone gives a one-dimensional view of the immigrant experience, and most times they will not hesitate to use other stereotypes to maintain such concepts. Cases like Ms. Trump’s convey the idea that a citizenship status relies on a woman’s partner and it is a tale of misogyny and xenophobia walking hand in hand. Irresponsible coverage like the initial response of the Washington Post is a positive reinforcement of most fiction that has been written about immigrants. Both of them are part of the sub romcom genre of “green card romances” and should follow the recent flow of classic romantic comedies. If it does not reinvent itself, it really should just die.
Something can be categorized as systemic when it is an inescapable encounter. It affects a social body generally, even – and especially – if certain parts of the system do not notice its presence. A society is a system, and something is socially systemic when it invades both private and public spheres of life. The non-place of immigrants consists of persistent inescapable encounters. It resides even in the most intimate of territories, as a shadow – a weight that can hunt you even when it seems that there is nothing to carry.
From friends and non-friends, movies, tv shows and the internet, the idea that it is trivial for a non-citizen to do anything, including entering into a relationship, for the sake of gaining US citizenship is a common imaginary with concrete consequences. The scenes that play in most people’s heads when marriage to immigrants is the topic reveals aspects of systemic oppression against foreigners that are reinforced by media daily and have been centralized lately in Melania Trump’s case.
Ms. Trump is the second first-lady born outside of the United States, marrying just 208 years after London-born Louisa Adams, wife of sixth U.S. president John Quincy Adams. Just as in the case of her predecessor, Melania’s relationship to the president is constantly questioned and publicized. In Ms. Trump’s case, her independence and ability to make her own life choices is frequently underestimated and the mere suggestion that she participated in a scam to get the “Einstein visa” was accepted as fact by the public faster than you can say “green card.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/questions-linger- about-how- melania- trump-a- slovenian-model- scored-the- einstein-visa/2018/02/28/d307ddb2- 1b35- 11e8-ae5a- 16e60e4605f3_story.html?utm_term=.7f45bd085acc
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/us/melania-trump- einstein-visa.html *Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. Kalie Jones