How
hard was it for the first lady to obtain a visa reserved for immigrants
of "extraordinary ability"? On Thursday, The Washington Post explored
the subject in some detail, and questioned whether Melania Trump, then …
3 hours ago
Did Melania Trump really qualify for her "Einstein visa"?
US First Lady Melania Trump waves during a Make
America Great Again rally at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown, Ohio,
July 25, 2017. /
Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images
How hard was it for the first lady to obtain a visa reserved for immigrants of "extraordinary ability"?
On Thursday, The Washington Post explored the subject in some detail, and questioned whether Melania Trump, then Melania Knauss,
was really qualified for a visa through the EB-1 program.
The visas,
according to the Post, were "designed for renowned academic researchers,
multinational
business executives or those in other fields, such as
Olympic athletes and Oscar-winning actors,
who demonstrated 'sustained
national and international acclaim.'"
"We called it the Einstein
visa," former Rep. Bruce Morrisson, who helped write the bill that
created
the EB-1 program in 1990, told the Post.
However,
according to a lawyer who specializes in obtaining EB-1 and EB-2 visas
for her clients,
the visas don't just go to the Albert Einsteins of the
world. In fact, they're "not that difficult" to obtain,
immigration
lawyer Merrill R. Cohen told CBS News.
Cohen has helped squash
players, a colored-pencil artist, a "classical music whistler," and an
"instructor of magicians" get EB-1 visas. Melania Trump never held any
of those jobs, but she was a
relatively well-known model, in part due to
her relationship with President Trump, when she began
petitioning the
government for an EB-1 in 2000.
In January 2000, for example, she
appeared nude and draped in a fur rug on the cover of British GQ.
"Sex
at 30,000 feet – Melania Knauss earns her air miles," said the headline.
She was also a runway
model who appeared on a billboard in Times Square
and in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
Applicants for an EB-1 visa need to meet three of ten listed
criteria or have won a major award in their
field. The criteria to
prove extraordinary ability include "commercial successes in the
performing arts,"
the ability to "command a high salary or significantly
high remuneration compared to others in the field,"
and having your
work "displayed at artistic exhibitions or showcases."
However,
Cohen said that you don't need to make money performing your
"extraordinary ability," so long
as you have other means of supporting
yourself.
"We do a lot of squash players," she said. "They don't
make a lot of money at the profession, but they win
top prizes, and
there's lots of published material about them…Mostly, they have day jobs
as financial analysts."
Also, while the examples listed by the
government of a major one-time prize are the "Pulitzer, Oscar, [or]
Olympic medal," Cohen said the awards can be far more obscure than any
of those. "You know promos
before movies? We had a guy who did a lot of
promos, and he won the Gold Promax International
Award…we showed that
that was the top prize in the field, and he got his green card based on
winning that prize."
As for the classical music whistler, Cohen
said that immigration authorities realized that it was a unique talent,
but
"they wanted to know that it was actually a field. So we showed that
there were literally 10 people in the
National Classical Music
Whistler's Association, and he had been president, so they saw that it
was a field,
and we got it through."
Cohen also proved a
colored-pencil artist was at the top of her field even though she had
never sold a picture.
"To be at the top of the field, you can decide you
never want to sell a piece of art," Cohen said. "This client
never
wanted to sell her work, but she would display it in galleries and she
got written up in the paper because
she had a unique technique."
Cohen
said it's impossible to judge whether Melania Trump deserved an EB-1
without taking a look
at her application, which is not public and Cohen
has not seen. "There might have been a lot of evidence
that we're not
aware of," she said.
Still, based on the available evidence, Cohen says someone like Melania Trump would "likely qualify" for an EB-1.
"While
[the EB-1 category] is arguably the highest standard to which an alien
is held when applying for a green card,
it isn't meant to be limited to a
single individual or two. Rather...it is reserved for that 'small
percentage' of people at the
top of the field. A model on the cover of
GQ, and in Sports Illustrated, etc. will likely qualify, as he/she will
likely have
a lot more evidence than just those items."
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