Donald Trump’s immigration hypocrisy - By The WaPo Editorial Board

By Editorial Board September 6 at 7:23 PM

A MONTH ago, Donald Trump and officials in his campaign assured voters they would organize a news conference to clear up questions about the legal means by which his Slovenian-born wife, Melania, entered the country in the mid-1990s and obtained a green card several years before they were married in 2005. Those questions persist, the Trump campaign has refused to answer them, and no such news conference has occurred.

Ms. Trump insists she violated no immigration laws; that may prove to be the case. Yet her own sketchy and not-quite-consistent account of her initial immigration status, along with the publication of nude modeling photos of her taken in New York the year before she says she entered the country, have combined to stoke doubts that she played entirely by the rules.

If she didn’t, some sympathy may be in order. U.S. immigration laws are so abstruse, so dysfunctional and so out of step with the demands of the American labor market that — well, it’s no accident that 11 million people live in this country without proper documentation, and that many or most of them have been here for 15 years or longer.

Less sympathy would be due Mr. Trump, who, having built his campaign around vilifying illegal immigrants, looks like a Grand Wizard of Hypocrisy. And having spent months as the most prominent exponent of the detestable “birther” movement, badgering the president to release his plainly valid and unexceptional birth certificate, the Republican presidential nominee now can’t be bothered to come clean on legitimate questions about the terms under which his wife entered the country and remained here.

-snip-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trumps-immigration-hypocrisy/2016/09/06/270b1b0c-746d-11e6-be4f-3f42f2e5a49e_story.html?utm_term=.dc9961e0affb&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1