Republican nominee Donald Trump has been saying for months that American companies need to hire more domestic workers and businesses must return to the United States. However, the GOP nominee failed to practice what he preached earlier this month when he allegedly hired 78 foreign laborers to work on two of his Florida properties.
According to BuzzFeed, Trump filed temporary visa applications for 78 positions for servers, housekeepers, and cooking staff for his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach and the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter. He claimed that he couldn’t find Americans who can fill the positions from $10 to under $13 an hour.
Trump’s campaign has yet to respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed. But in the past, the former reality TV star defended the use of guest workers by saying there was no other way to fill the jobs.
“You can’t get help,” Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last year. “Getting help in Palm Beach during the season is almost impossible.”
Tom Veenstra, a senior director at Palm Beach’s career services center, said there was a database of more than 1,300 people who had an interest in hospitality positions, according to BuzzFeed. However, Trump has a proven track record at finding foreign and undocumented workers.
https://twitter.com/Politicade2016/status/736048128286175232
Think Progress says undocumented construction laborers were found working at his latest hotel in Washington, D.C. as well as in his restaurant in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City. Trump also has a habit of underpaying his employees. He allegedly underpaid roughly 200 undocumented Polish workers who were contracted to raze a building in midtown Manhattan to make room for his Trump Tower.
Congress sets an annual cap of about 66,000 H-2B visas for low-skilled, low wage workers, sometimes used for people who become cooks, housekeepers, and other hospitality position. These visas allow employees to legally stay in the United States so long as they stay in that specific job. But that has led to many instances of unscrupulous employers hiring guest workers and exploiting this provision to withhold wages and to threaten employees with deportation. Similar horror stories have played out among H-2A visa holders, who are usually foreigners hired for agricultural work when there’s a shortage of American workers.
Featured image via YouTube screen grab
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