President Trump has proposed a merit-based immigration plan to move away from the current system which favours applicants with family in the US. The Democrat House Speaker accused the plan of trying to “make America white again”, the Washington Examiner reported. Nancy Pelosi highlighted Melania Trump’s parents are likely to have used the current policy to move to the US.
Ms Pelosi said at a Commonwealth Club of California event: “I don’t know if merit counted for when his wife’s family came into the country.
“I don’t know. Maybe it did. God bless them if it did. But he calls that ‘chain migration’ which he wants to get rid of.”
Slovene-born Melania moved to New York in 1996 at the beginning of her modelling career.
Her parents, Viktor and Amalijia Knauss, became US citizens in 2018 and regularly travel with their daughter.
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Ms Pelosi continued to hit out at Trump’s immigration plan.
She added: “Should we attach a green card to the diploma of so many scientists and engineers and all the rest and graduate students who train in the US so that they can stay here?
“Of course. But that’s not the point.
“The point is that the president does not share the view of even Ronald Reagan and two Bushes in recent history.”
Other senior Democrats have dismissed Trump’s plans calling his ideas “dead on arrival”.
While unveiling the plans, Trump said: “We cherish the open door that we want to create for our country.
“But a big proportion of those immigrants must come in through merit and skill.
“The biggest change we make is to increase the proportion of highly skilled immigration from 12 percent to 57 percent and we would like to even see if we can go higher.”