Donald Trump Uses Mostly Foreign Workers at his Florida Resort

One of Donald Trump’s most common refrains on the campaign trail is that he is going to bring jobs back to America. He also claims that he will punish companies who outsource jobs to foreign workers, although the specifics on how he would do either always get a little fuzzy from there. Just.. “we’re going to do it.”

We don’t really have a record of Trump’s performance in public office, since he’s never held one. The next closest thing we have to look at is his record of how he has managed his companies. Not only is that record the next best point of comparison, but it’s also what he’s explicitly running on, so it’s especially germane to this election season.

And Trump’s record as a businessman is that he primarily relies on cheap, foreign labor to build and staff his real estate holdings. From Hot Air:

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. …

But he 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.

The visas are issued through one of a handful of legal and often-debated programs through which employers can temporarily hire foreign workers when American labor is not available. As part of its applications for the visas submitted to the Labor Department, Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago attested that in the vast majority of cases it was unable to fill the positions with American workers, or, as he told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in September, “getting help in Palm Beach during the season is almost impossible.”

Asked why his club must seek so many foreign workers when Americans have applied for the same positions, 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.”