Trump: Carrier can't ship jobs overseas—but I can hire foreign workers for my resort
Donald Trump is still hiring cooks, waitresses, and housekeepers from outside the U.S. to staff his Palm Beach resort Mar-a-Lago, according to new information from the Department of Labor. Apparently, Trump just couldn't find any good help in America to fill those jobs so he relied on H-2B visas to hire foreign workers for the positions, reports Jeff Ostrowski.
A month before he was elected president, Trump won approval to hire 64 foreign workers through the federal government’s H-2B visa program, according to newly released data from the U.S. Labor Department. Last year, Trump was allowed to hire 69 foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago.
So Carrier can't send jobs overseas but Trump can ship in foreign workers?
“It’s very, very hard to get people,” Trump said. “Other hotels do the exact same thing.”
CareerSource Palm Beach County, a nonprofit job placement agency, says it knows plenty of American citizens willing to work at Mar-a-Lago.
“We have hundreds of qualified candidates and hundreds of job orders for various hospitality positions such as servers, chefs, cooks, bartenders, housekeeping, guest services, spa services, recreation, maintenance and more,” CareerSource spokesman Tom Veenstra said.
Hundreds. Trump's resort has tapped CareerSource just once to help it find an employee: a banquet server. One. Yet every tourist season Mar-a-Lago seeks dozens of H-2B visas to fill positions. Because “It’s very, very hard to get people."
As of October, Palm Beach County’s labor market included 35,766 job seekers who were officially unemployed.