Donald Trump’s Resorts Rejected American Workers So They Could Hire Low-Wage Foreigners Instead, Report Claims
Donald Trump’s company rejected dozens of American applicants so they could instead hire low-wage foreign workers instead, a new analysis of government records finds.
The Trump Organization has long been under fire for its reliance on foreign workers and even illegal immigrants, but a new report from BuzzFeed News uncovers the lengths the company has taken to avoid hiring Americans. The report cited government records that showed how Trump’s company received 58 applications from U.S. citizens or legal residents to work in the resort as cooks, servers, and housekeepers for a four-year period between 2014 and 2018, but only hired one of them.
During that time, the Trump Organization received approval from the U.S. Department of Labor to hire 375 foreign workers on H-2 visas. During that time, the Trump Organization told the Labor Department that American candidates were “not interested” or failed to meet minimum requirements for the jobs, Salon noted.
But the report noted that the Trump Organization made it nearly impossible for American to apply or receive the jobs, instituting very strenuous working conditions.
“The job listings posted by Trump’s properties required applicants to ‘be available to work split-shifts, nights, weekends & holidays’ for shifts beginning as early as 7 a.m. and ending as late as 11 p.m., ‘7 days per week,’ ” the report noted. “The listings required housekeeper applicants to have a high school diploma, have three months experience in a ‘luxury hospitality setting,’ and be ‘articulate in English’ for a $10.68 per hour job, even [though] the same requirements were not made when seeking guest workers.”
This is not the first time the Trump Organization has come under fire for its hiring practices. Last year, a number of illegal immigrants came forward to say that they had worked for Donald Trump’s company and that their superiors were aware of their status. One employee, Victorina Morales, was fired by the Trump organization after publicly revealing that she was an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala. As The Washington Post reported, her story led to others who came forward to say that the company did not conduct the proper background checks to ensure that employees were living in the United States legally.
Trump Organization's use of foreign-worker visas hits a 10-year high | https://t.co/x1NYudROAHhttps://t.co/Xs93XQodzJ
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Trump Organization employees came forward at a time when Donald Trump had ratcheted up his rhetoric on illegal immigration in the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, leading to criticism of Trump for personally profiting from illegal immigration while calling for harsher immigration policies for the United States.
