President Donald Trump often conveys a strong preference for American workers. But as a request from the president's Mar-a-Lago golf club to hire 61 people from abroad demonstrates, putting that preference into practice can prove difficult.

The president's Florida resort — which he has promoted as the "Southern White House" — filed requests with the Department of Labor to obtain 61 visas for foreign workers, according to Job Order records posted Thursday by the department's Employment and Training Administration.

The Mar-a-Lago club asked for 40 H-2B visas for servers and another 21 for cooks. The H-2B visa is for "temporary non-agricultural workers."

According to the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the employer filing for H-2B visas must demonstrate that there are "not enough U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available" and that the foreign workers "will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers."

The resort made a similar request earlier this year, filing for 70 visas for restaurant staff as well as housekeepers in January.

According to this week's filing, the cooks would be paid at least $13.31 an hour and the servers would be paid at least $12.68 an hour.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump was asked about the club's practice of hiring foreign workers for the busiest months of the year during one of the Republican primary debates.

"It's a few months, five months at the most. People don't want a short-term job," Trump explained. "It's very, very hard to get people. But other hotels do the exact same thing."

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