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Amalija Knavs, a former Slovenian manufacturing facility employee who turned a United States citizen with assist from one in all her daughters, Melania Trump, has died. She was 78.
Her dying was introduced on Tuesday night time by Mrs. Trump, the previous first girl, on X. No trigger was given.
During a New Year’s Eve party at his residence and personal membership, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla., Mrs. Knavs’s son-in-law, former President Donald J. Trump, said that Mrs. Knavs was “very ailing” and that Mrs. Trump was together with her mom in a hospital in Miami.
Mrs. Knavs and her husband, Viktor, turned naturalized U.S. residents in August 2018 beneath a course of during which grownup residents will help their family acquire inexperienced playing cards and acquire everlasting resident standing. Mrs. Trump had been their sponsor.
But months earlier, Mr. Trump had denounced that course of as “chain migration” and wrote on Twitter, now X: “CHAIN MIGRATION should finish now! Some individuals are available in, and so they carry their complete household with them, who could be actually evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!”
Michael Wildes, an immigration lawyer for the Knavses, mentioned on the time that the Knavses had met the five-year requirement to have inexperienced playing cards earlier than looking for citizenship.
Citizenship for the Knavses prompted essential responses from Mr. Trump’s detractors, together with a tweet from Ana Navarro-Cárdenas, a Republican strategist, who wrote: “I assume when it’s Melania’s Family, it’s ‘household reunification’ and ought to be applauded. Everybody else, it’s ‘chain migration’ and have to be stopped.”
At the time, Amalija and Viktor Knavs have been reportedly dwelling in a penthouse at Trump Tower in Manhattan and likewise spending time on the White House and at Mar-a-Lago.
Amalija Ulcnik was born on July 9, 1945, in Judendorf-Strassengel, Austria, and grew up there and in Slovenia, when it was nonetheless a republic in Yugoslavia earlier than its independence. Her father, Anton Ulcnik, was a cobbler and later a red-onion farmer. Her mom, Amalija (Gliha) Ulcnik, was a homemaker and seamstress.
Ms. Knavs harvested onions on her household’s farm earlier than going to work at a state-owned kids’s clothes manufacturing facility from 1964 to 1997, according to a profile of Melania Trump in The New Yorker. She was accountable for “creating patterns for mass manufacturing and monitoring how a given sample affected the ultimate work,” Bojan Pozar wrote in “Melania Trump: The Inside Story” (2016). She additionally sewed garments for her daughters, Ines and Melania.
Mr. Knavs, who labored as a chauffeur and later as a automotive and bike salesman, belonged to the Communist Party.
Melania, who modified the spelling of her title to Knauss throughout her modeling profession, which started in Slovenia, mentioned that she was impressed by her mom’s work.
“My elegant and hardworking mom Amalija launched me to trend and wonder,” she mentioned in her speech to the Republican National Convention in 2016. “My father, Viktor, instilled in me a ardour for enterprise and journey. Their integrity, compassion and intelligence replicate to today on me and for my love of household and America.”
Mrs. Knavs’s survivors embrace her husband; Mrs. Trump; her older daughter, Ines Knauss; and her grandson, Barron Trump.
Mrs. Trump had her personal immigration historical past. According to information reviews, Mrs. Trump acquired a so-called Einstein, or EB-1, visa in 2001 for “people of extraordinary skill” when she was modeling.
She appeared on the cover of British GQ in 2000, the yr earlier than she petitioned for the visa, and was featured in Sports Illustrated and different magazines later that yr.
She married Mr. Trump in 2005 and have become a citizen the following yr.
Orlando Mayorquin contributed reporting.
