Guess how many Americans Trump hired to work at his properties this spring?

Donald Trump campaigned for President by promising to make jobs for “forgotten” Americans. But a new report proves that his own company will do everything it can to hire cheaper foreign workers and forget Floridians or New Yorkers who need jobs near their luxury clubs.

A study by found that three Trump properties in those two states applied for foreign worker visas for service industry employees under the H2-B program. Of the 144 positions advertised at those three Trump clubs, only a single job went to an American worker, the rest went to low-cost foreign laborers. (see chart below)

Trump’s opulent Mar-a-Lago club in Florida was one of the three properties, and if you’re wondering how you couldn’t find 70 service employees in Florida, well, it took a lot of work by his managers not to find Americans for those jobs. Vox wrote:

In August 2017 alone, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach (Trump’s “winter White House”) sought permission to hire 70 servers, housekeepers, and cooks for eight months starting in October, according to recruitment reports submitted to the Department of Labor.

Documents show that hiring managers at the Trump establishments made the minimum efforts required by law to recruit US workers.

Based on the paperwork submitted, the hiring manager fulfilled the minimum effort required by law to try to find American workers first: place an ad in the local newspaper for two days, notify past employees of the openings via US mail, and post the job notice in a visible place at the club for current employees to see. 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).

After waiting the required month, the hiring manager at Mar-a-Lago reported that only seven US workers responded to the newspaper job ads, and that they were either unqualified, uninterested, or did not return calls.

Since newspaper classified ads are an anachronistic medium for finding employees, Trump’s managers took advantage of their limited reach compared to websites like Monster.com or Craigslist or Backpage to exclude higher-paid Americans from working at Mar-a-Lago.

While the Palm Beach Post has a circulation of 160,000 in a county with 1.4 million people, Trump’s team didn’t take any chances, instead relying on smaller newspapers for their ads to make entirely sure that they weren’t overwhelmed with Americans job seekers.

That is how the Trump Org’s trick worked for obtaining the visas.

What makes the entire situation more appalling is that President Trump expanded the H2-B Visa program caps, which most certainly made it easier for his own properties to get foreign guest workers.

Trump’s administration expends a lot of energy detaining immigrant doctors and deporting immigrant entrepreneurs in the name of racism.

But when President Trump’s properties needed cheap labor, it was ok for the government to authorize bringing in 20,000 more immigrants, so long as they take American jobs at lower wages and then go home when the season ends, with no path to residency, or citizenship.

Here is Vox’s chart showing the ratio of Americans to foreign workers hired at Trump properties participating in the H2-B guest worker visa program:

Trump’s foreign labor hiring chart.
Grant Stern

Editor at Large

is the Executive Editor of Occupy Democrats and published author. His new Meet the Candidates 2020 book series is distributed by Simon and Schuster. He's also a mortgage broker, community activist and radio personality in Miami, Florida., as well as the producer of the Dworkin Report podcast. Grant is also an occasional contributor to Raw Story, Alternet, and the DC Report, an unpaid senior advisor to the Democratic Coalition, and a Director of Sunshine Agenda Inc. a government transparency nonprofit organization. Get all of his stories sent directly to your inbox here: