Posted on 01/12/2018 10:58:27 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
As a candidate and as president, Donald Trump’s position and comments on immigration have been controversial.
But while the president condemns illegal immigration and eliminates protections for some immigrant groups, his companies depend on foreign labor, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Labor.
At least one Trump hotel also depends on immigrant labor or descendants of immigrants: Trump National Doral Miami.
During a campaign event in October 2016, Trump said that 80 percent of the hotel’s employees are Latinos, according to a Los Angeles Times report.
At the event, Trump encouraged his hotel employees “to step forward with their praise” about “working for Trump.”
“Many spoke of their home countries — Cuba, Haiti, Chile,” the article said.
Over the past decade, Trump companies have applied for almost 1,000 visas for foreign workers, hundreds of whom ended up employed at the Mar-a-Lago Club, the luxury Trump family-owned hotel in Palm Beach, according to a Univision analysis with data of the Department of Labor.
According to an article in the Palm Beach Post published on Nov. 3, Trump companies obtained permission to hire 70 waiters, cooks and cleaning staff for Mar-a-Lago Club for the 2017-2018 tourist season. The company pays the cooks $13.34 an hour, the waiters $11.88 and the cleaning employees $10.33 an hour, according to the newspaper.
The employees hired by Mar-a-Lago are mostly from Romania, according to a New York Times February 2016 article, also based on public records from the federal government.
On Thursday, President Trump allegedly made new disparaging comments about immigrant communities. The Washington Post reported that Trump referred to Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as “shithole countries” during a discussion at the White House with lawmakers on immigration policy.
On Friday morning, Trump took to Twitter to address the issue. He admitted that he’d used “tough” language but denied using the reported “shithole” phrase. At least one congressman at the White House meeting, Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, said media reports of the derogatory term “are accurate.”
Trump has said in previous reports that he hires foreigners because “it is almost impossible” to get “qualified people” to clean, work in the kitchen or serve in the restaurants of his hotels during the high season.
However, the employment agency in Palm Beach County, where Mar-a-Lago is located, has said that Trump’s company rarely turns to them to look for employees, even though they have people who want the jobs.
Tom Veenstra, spokesman for that agency, told the Palm Beach Post in November: “While Mar-a-Lago asks the federal government for dozens of H-2B visas [for foreign workers] every tourist season, the private club rarely asks CareerSource for help finding a local employee.”
In 2015, the hotel put in one request for a single banquet server.
The practice of hiring temporary visa workers (H-2B) is common in the tourism industry, and other hotels in Palm Beach also heavily rely on temporary foreign employees. However, the president has publicly denounced U.S. companies that have moved their factories to Mexico and other countries and has insisted on prioritizing American workers.
Just don't start a thread asking which side your ball should hang on your Santa hat.
I am still here! I don't really post a lot but like most of us, have to have my daily dose of Free Republic.
Having worked in a company acquired by the Loral empire I have a view of how things work in the acquired property. The huge, multi-billion dollar Loral company was run out of an office in New York that had, if I recall, about ten people in it. Loral made no effort to interfere in or run our business. They simply said, “send us x dollars every quarter.” How that was done was up to the people running the acquired company.
If Loral had attempted to meddle in the actual running of the company from that distant headquarters it most likely would have resulted in chaos. As an example, I once worked for Allied Stores, which was run from an office in Atlanta. Allied owned hundreds of stores all over the United States. They attempted to control them all from the central office. One of the things they did was decide when the stores would switch from winter to summer air-conditioning settings. These were literally controlled by a switch in the power room labeled, “Summer/Winter.” A memo would go out from Atlanta to switch from Summer to Winter and all stores would do it. I would arrive at my store in Tampa where the temperature was an astonishing ninety five degrees in the store. The store traffic would drop to almost zero. There was no way I was going to put up with working four hours in ninety five degrees so I’d go up to the power room and switch the switch back to turn on the air conditioning. It was obvious I’d done it, but nobody ever said anything. When the temperature was right in Tampa, I’d switch it back. One day I got a call from the head cashier. This was unusual and she was whispering. She had arranged to have me work somebody’s hours that night. I asked why and she whispered, “Just get in here and reset the dammed switch!”
Allied stores went out of business, and deservedly so. Every year, their location in Key West was stocked up in snow shovels and heavy winter clothes. Idiots...
I suppose most of us have unknowingly “hired” illegals along the way, via subcontractors. It happens, especially if we’re in a distant location and don’t control or notice who shows up to push a broom at a job site.
We’ve built in CA. It would surprise me if some of the contractors and subs HADN’T hired illegals.
isn’t it the job of the career sourcing agency to make connections with potential businesses who will likely have job openings periodically? they should be contacting the resorts often saying we got greta people to hire. Otherwise they are not doing a good job in trying to get their applicants jobs.
It’s not on Trump to seek out their career center. where is their eagerness to do a good job? that’s what Trump looks for when hiring and this center’s weakness is likely what Trump sees and bypasses them. The job applicants looking for work would do better to apply to Trump resort directly.
At the Compassionate level, there is no difference. Compassion obscures any difference
Snow shovels are good for moving mulch in Florida. ;)
He played the game. Now it’s tome to end it. I don’t care what he did before as long he fixes it going forward.
Troll? Lol. That is used to much. Nick is not a troll.
This story has been thrown around before. I recall it from more than a year ago during the campaign. 1,000 visa applications for workers over a decade or more is a tiny number for the "Trump companies", whose employees number in the thousands (don't know a total figure).
Just one more example of the MSM, fake news, taking a small bit of information and twisting it into a highly negative, greatly exaggerated and intentionally misleading story about Trump.
And he is not entitled to change his opinion and position on the immigration issue? Remember who he was working for back then...his family and shareholders. Now he's working for all Americans, and acting appropriately.
I know, sometimes real life puts constraints on posting time, but allows us to read...at least the headlines.
And as I said up thread, sometimes its just easier to pay a fine than fight it; so he did.
Exactly.
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