Too Much and Never Enough: on Immigration

Mother participated in chain migration in 1930

Mary [Donald Trump's mother] had been the youngest of ten in 1912 in the Outer Hebrides, located 40 miles off the coast of Scotland. Mary, one of six daughters, was encouraged to journey to America, where the opportunities were greater , and the men more plentiful.

In 1930, in a classic example of mass migration, Mary boarded the RMS Transylvania in order to join two of her sisters who had already settled in the US. Despite her status as a domestic servant, as a white Anglo-Saxon, Mary would have been allowed into the country even under her son's new draconian immigration laws introduced nearly 90 years later. She turned 18 the day before her arrival in New York and met Fred not long after. Fred and Mary were married in 1936.