Donald Trump Loves Foreign Workers When They Work For Donald Trump

You would assume, since Donald Trump has made kicking foreigners in the teeth -- particularly foreigners who take jobs that should be kept sacrosanct for workers here in the good old U.S. of A -- a centerpiece of his frighteningly and unwarrantedly successful campaign, that employees at his various gold-plated resorts would be 'Mericans. But let's face it: you always knew that wouldn't be the case, right? You already knew that he used undocumented workers to build his probably garish luxury hotel in D.C. But consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and the Donald has a big beautiful brain. He encompasses multitudes. So many multitudes that he is able to basically fully stock his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach with not-Americans and fail to see what the big deal is about it.

Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired.

In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries. [...]

[H]e has also pursued more than 500 visas for foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago since 2010, according to the United States Department of Labor, while hundreds of domestic applicants failed to get the same jobs.

Of course Donald and Company have an answer as to why they have to look outside the states (which Trump reiterated during Thursday's Republican debate, when Marco Rubio tried to make a point about it, and Trump blew him off): American workers just suck.

Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview from Mar-a-Lago this month: “The only reason they wouldn’t get a callback is that they weren’t qualified, for some reason. There are very few qualified people during the high season in the area.”

Hmm. That doesn't seem right. Good old American laborers don't want to work in the service industry in the high season -- the time at which they would typically make the mostest American dollars? Could it be instead that you like paying people very little and generally treating them shabbily? Maybe that is part of it! For the pleasure of serving Donald Trump and Donald Trump-like people, you get paid $10.60 an hour, you don't get benefits, you don't get 40 hours, you don't get job security, and you don't get tips, because tipping is discouraged. Wouldn't want to ask the disgustingly rich to tip, now would we?

There is likely another reason that Trump loves hiring him some not-American labor: the conditions of their visa mean they are basically indentured to TrumpCo.

Industry experts say they can be attractive to employers because they are essentially a captive work force.

The foreign employees must be paid the Labor Department-approved “prevailing wage” for the job and location. But they can work only for the company that sponsored the visa, and cannot, for instance, switch to another resort down the road where the pay is better without a new visa approval. A 2015 report by the Government Accountability Office found that guest workers’ precarious position tends to discourage complaints about mistreatment by employees fearful of retaliation by the employer.

Come to think of it, that pretty much sounds exactly like Donald Trump's vision for American workers: beholden to Donald Trump and other plutocrats, now and forever, Amen. Man, this is gonna Make America So Great Again.

[ NYT ]