Forbes’ analysis shows Trump’s businesses have looked to bring on at least 1,670 temporary foreign workers over the past 16 years.
The revelation that the Trump organization prefers foreign workers comes as the Trump campaign claims to put American workers first and promises to spend taxpayer money reviving President Eisenhower’s cruel, and ultimately unsuccessful, mass deportation policy on day one if he returns to the White House.
Learn more about Trump’s hypocritical preference for foreign workers:
- Donald Trump’s business relied on more temporary foreign workers in 2023 than in any other recent year, according to an analysis of records from the Department of Labor that date back to 2008.
- Mar-a-Lago, two golf clubs and the Virginia winery sought to hire a combined 170 foreign workers last year.
- The former president’s businesses have looked to bring on at least 1,670 temporary foreign workers over the past 16 years.
- During Trump’s four years in the White House, his business sought to employ 382 foreigners, including 121 in 2018.
- Trump has long taken a skeptical view of outsiders, promoting a conspiracy theory for years that Barack Obama is not American, then centering his 2016 presidential campaign on a promise to build a wall on America’s southern border.
- The Trump administration tried to prevent employers from relying on foreign workers, but it did so by targeting permanent employees–not the temporary ones that Trump’s properties tend to hire.
- As of July 2023, when Mar-a-Lago and Trump’s Palm Beach golf club asked for permission to seek temporary foreign workers, the unemployment rate in Florida was 2.7%.
- The Trump Organization makes use of two different kinds of visas: H-2A for agricultural workers, who were hired for the Virginia winery, and H-2B for non-agricultural workers, who were employed as servers, clerks, housekeepers and kitchen staff at clubs.
- Trump’s hiring practices have caused plenty of controversy in the past. The Washington Post reported in 2019 that it had interviewed 49 workers who did manual labor at Trump’s properties illegally for years.
- Then there are the national-security concerns. Mar-a-Lago looked to employ 380 short-term foreign workers from 2017 to 2022, when Trump had access to classified documents, initially as president and then as a former government official living at the club. Trump also kept classified material at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he summers, the Department of Justice alleges in its indictment of the former president. In 2022, that club sought seven foreigners to work as cooks and servers.
- In June 2023, Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 felony charges related to his retention of government documents, including 102 the FBI allegedly found when it raided Mar-a-Lago in August 2022. Spokespeople for the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.
Read the full Forbes article here.
Published: May 22, 2024