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Hypocrisy on Steroids: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Rejects American Workers, Prefers “Compliant” Foreign Workers Instead

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As President Trump campaigned on Fox News about his ‘successes’ demonizing and terrorizing immigrants, and called for a reformed immigration system because “We need workers,” a new investigative article by Buzzfeed reporters Ken Bensinger, Jeremy Singer-Vine, and Jessica Garrison flagrantly displays Trump’s hypocrisy.

Trump’s Mar-A-Lago property purposefully overlooked local workers to hire foreign workers, because they’re more “compliant” and more easily intimidated. Story after story proves that Trump doesn’t care about workers – native or immigrant. This administration’s hypocrisy is never-ending, and yet they continue to spew hatred despite Trump’s entire empire being built on abusing immigrants and exploiting their vulnerabilities. The ongoing hiring of undocumented workers, the differentiation in their pay and benefits, the recruiting and false documentation of immigrant workers in the Trump Organization all point to a business model based on exploiting immigrant workers, even as candidate Trump’s spews self-righteous opposition to immigrants and their families.

The Buzzfeed article is excerpted below, with the entire story available here.

For years, President Donald Trump has insisted it’s impossible to find Americans to fill seasonal jobs at his hotels, resorts, and wineries, leaving him no choice but to hire foreign guest workers instead.

“You can’t get help,” he has said.

But government records obtained by BuzzFeed News reveal for the first time that at least 58 US workers applied for the temporary jobs as cooks, servers, and housekeepers at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump resorts from early 2014 through mid-2018.

Only one of them appears to have been hired.

Instead of giving jobs to local workers, the Trump properties applied for permission to bring in more than 375 low-wage workers from abroad on short-term visas. All of the requests were approved by the Department of Labor, the records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show.7

Since being elected, President Trump has held himself up as a fierce defender of American jobs. He has pressured companies to keep struggling US plants open, enacted tariffs against China, and threatened to close the border with Mexico. Earlier this month, Trump complained about the influx of undocumented immigrants from south of the border. “Our country is full,” he said. “Can’t take you anymore, I’m sorry.”

Yet throughout that time, he has continued a practice — started more than a decade ago — of staffing his high-end resorts with foreign workers. Businesses owned by or bearing the name Trump have sought to hire more than 600 employees through the guest worker program, known as the H-2 visa, since he launched his presidential campaign in June 2015.

… The records furnished by the Labor Department include recruitment reports accompanying 19 different H-2 petitions submitted by three different Trump properties: Mar-a-Lago; the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida; and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. BuzzFeed News also received several other visa petitions from these Trump properties, but they did not include recruitment reports.

The one US resident who these records indicate was hired got a job at Mar-a-Lago, in 2015, as a cook earning $13.01 per hour. The outcome for two additional applicants was listed only as “TBD.”

… The Trump properties offered the Labor Department a variety of reasons for rejecting the US applicants, including that candidates were “not interested” or did “not meet the minimum experience requirement,” or that they did not return the company’s phone calls. In seven petitions’ recruitment reports, the properties’ representatives said that zero US workers had applied.

… The Trump properties’ US job postings required three or six months’ prior relevant work experience, as well as that the candidate have “no visible tattoos or piercings.” Applicants, who are asked to commit to temporary jobs months in advance, are also asked to “be available to work split-shifts, nights, weekends & holidays” for shifts that could start as early as 7 a.m. or as late as 11 p.m., “7 days per week.”

Such restrictions can serve as a disincentive to US job seekers, discouraging them from ever applying in the first place, particularly at a time when unemployment rates in Palm Beach County, Florida, where Mar-a-Lago is located, have dipped below 4%.

There is no public record of Trump properties incurring any penalties related to the H-2 program.

… According to media reports, Trump properties have also employed undocumented immigrants to perform gardening, maintenance, and groundskeeping work, but in the wake of public attention have begun terminating those employees — some of whom have worked for the resorts for years.

In late 2014, the Labor Department audited Mar-a-Lago’s use of the guest worker program for the previous season, the records obtained by BuzzFeed News show. Auditors found that the Trump property had requested more H-2 visas than it ended up using and also failed to report instances in which guest workers left their jobs ahead of schedule, a situation that can result in workers staying in the US rather than returning home as intended.

The regulator found that Mar-a-Lago “failed to show it complied with the Department’s regulations,” but the audit was closed with no penalties and no plans for further action.

The Labor Department has no records of H-2 audits of the Trump golf clubs in Jupiter or Bedminster, an agency spokesperson said. Although the audits found four instances of potential noncompliance by Mar-a-Lago, the DOL “found neither a substantial pattern or practice that warranted action,” the spokesperson added.

A spokesperson for CareerSource of Palm Beach County, which helps place local job seekers, said that, according to its records, it has only ever placed one applicant at a Trump property, in the fall of 2015 — which corresponds with the timing of the single hire in the Labor Department documents.

The spokesperson said that Trump properties, unlike some other hospitality employers in the county, have never contacted CareerSource for help in hiring American workers.