“America First” doesn’t seem to apply to the president’s own businesses.
.. The H-2B visa program allows seasonal, non-agricultural employers — like hotels and ski resorts — to hire foreign workers when they can’t find American ones. The Trump administration temporarily expanded this guest-worker program in 2017 while restricting other avenues of legal immigration, including the H-1B program for high-skilled workers.
.. The Trump Organization is exactly the kind of company that relies on the H-2B visa program for low-skilled workers.
.. two Trump properties in Florida (including Mar-a-Lago) and one in New York from the start of 2016 through the end of 2017. In that period, hiring managers said they were able to find and hire only one qualified American worker — a cook — for 144 open positions for
- servers,
- cooks,
- housekeepers, and
- bartenders.
.. He said Mar-a-Lago is just using the program how other employers use it: as a way to avoid paying higher wages or offering more benefits to attract American workers.
.. several labor economists in the state who were nonetheless puzzled that hotels or clubs would have such a hard time finding any service workers to hire.
.. “It doesn’t make sense,” said Tobias Pfutze, an economics professor at Florida International University in Miami. “I haven’t heard anything about there being a labor shortage. The service labor market here is very flexible.”
.. with a well defined peak season between the months of October and May of every year. The period during which the foreign national’s services are needed is not unpredictable, subject to change or considered to be a vacation period for our employees who are hired on a permanent basis.
.. Employers are required to pay the average local wage for the advertised position. Mar-a-Lago offered
- $10.33 per hour for housekeepers,
- $13.43 for cooks, and
- $11.88 for servers (no tips).