In the past, Trump has vigorously defended his use of foreign workers claiming that “Getting help in Palm Beach during the season is nearly impossible”. According to Trump, this makes it hard to find a consistent workforce of Americans, so the club fills the majority of its service jobs with foreign nationals through the H-2 visa program. The applications indicate the open positions are for servers, cooks and housekeeping staff at Mar-a-Lago and Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter.
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The jobs he requested pay wages ranging from $10.17 per hour to $11.13 per hour. He requested another seven waiters and six cooks for his golf club in nearby Jupiter.
Throughout the primary season and again at last week’s Republican Convention, Donald Trump has promised to bring jobs back to the United States.
Trump defends his actions by pointing to the seasonal nature of his golf clubs and resorts.
“You can’t get help”, Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” past year.
Tom Veenstra, a senior director at Palm Beach’s career services center, told BuzzFeed that there’s no way Trump couldn’t source those jobs in Florida. The agency now has 1,237 residents of Palm Beach Country interested in server, cook or chef positions, according to Buzzfeed. Furthermore, Mar-a-Lago has never contacted the agency to seek help finding employees.
The H-2 visas let employers bring in guest workers to fill temporary positions, but American workers need to always be given preference.
Critics of the club’s hiring practices say that there are more than enough Americans looking for work to fill those jobs, according to CNN. BuzzFeed News reports that the Republican nominee is now “seeking temporary visas to bring in 65 [foreign] workers at Mar-a-Lago along with another seven waiters and six cooks at the golf club”.
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During his speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg raised this as a reason to question Trump’s convictions, stating, “He says he wants to put Americans back to work, but he games the US visa system so he can hire temporary foreign workers at low wages”.
