For years, President Donald Trump has insisted it’s impossible to find Americans to fill seasonal jobs at his hotels, resorts, and wineries, leaving him no choice but to hire foreign guest workers instead.

“You can’t get help,” he has said.

But government records obtained by BuzzFeed News reveal for the first time that at least 58 US workers applied for the temporary jobs as cooks, servers, and housekeepers at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump resorts from early 2014 through mid-2018.

Only one of them appears to have been hired.



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Instead of giving jobs to local workers, the Trump properties applied for permission to bring in more than 375 low-wage workers from abroad on short-term visas. All of the requests were approved by the Department of Labor, the records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show.

Since being elected, President Trump has held himself up as a fierce defender of American jobs. He has pressured companies to keep struggling US plants open, enacted tariffs against China, and threatened to close the border with Mexico. Earlier this month, Trump complained about the influx of undocumented immigrants from south of the border. “Our country is full,” he said. “Can’t take you anymore, I’m sorry.”

Yet throughout that time, he has continued a practice — started more than a decade ago — of staffing his high-end resorts with foreign workers. Businesses owned by or bearing the name Trump have sought to hire more than 600 employees through the guest worker program, known as the H-2 visa, since he launched his presidential campaign in June 2015.

Most recently, the Trump Winery in Virginia, which is operated by Eric Trump, applied for 23 of the controversial visas for seasonal workers. Between Mar-a-Lago and three of his Trump National Golf Clubs, Trump’s highest-profile resorts apply for a total of around 100 guest worker visas per year, government records show.

Before getting permission to hire workers from outside the US, employers are required to seek local applicants by advertising the jobs in local newspapers and with government-run job recruitment centers. The ads are placed several months or more before the start date for the job, and employers are not required to advertise online. Records indicate the Trump properties complied with the recruiting rules, and year after year told the Labor Department that “there are not enough US workers to consider and hire.”

A White House official contacted BuzzFeed News to direct inquiries to the Trump Organization, which, along with Mar-a-Lago, did not respond to requests for comment.

The records furnished by the Labor Department include recruitment reports accompanying 19 different H-2 petitions submitted by three different Trump properties: Mar-a-Lago; the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida; and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. BuzzFeed News also received several other visa petitions from these Trump properties, but they did not include recruitment reports.

The one US resident who these records indicate was hired got a job at Mar-a-Lago, in 2015, as a cook earning $13.01 per hour. The outcome for two additional applicants was listed only as “TBD.”

The records released by the Labor Department are heavily redacted and do not identify any applicants by name.

The Trump properties offered the Labor Department a variety of reasons for rejecting the US applicants, including that candidates were “not interested” or did “not meet the minimum experience requirement,” or that they did not return the company’s phone calls. In seven petitions’ recruitment reports, the properties’ representatives said that zero US workers had applied.

A yearlong investigation by BuzzFeed News found that in many industries with seasonal staffing needs, employers prefer to hire foreign guest workers because they are seen as more compliant — less likely to quit for another job or to complain about low pay, physically demanding tasks, or difficult schedules. Unlike Americans who commute to their jobs and may have families and other demands on their time, guest workers are often housed on the job site and are therefore able to work longer hours.