America first! That was Trump’s not-so-subtle xenophobic campaign promise: Buy American, hire American. It’s been a central focus of his made-for-TV appearances with people like the Harley-Davidson executives, who several months later went on to announce they were closing their Kansas City-area assembly plant. While Trump has floated a lot of “America first” rhetoric, that is definitely not the case with his businesses, which rely heavily on foreign workers. From Vox:
A Vox analysis of hiring records for seasonal workers at three Trump properties in New York and Florida revealed that only one out of 144 jobs went to a US worker from 2016 to the end of 2017. Foreign guest workers with H-2B visas got the rest.
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.
Pretty convenient that the Trump administration expanded the one immigration plan that directly benefits his own businesses, eh? That’s not sitting well with some of his biggest anti-immigration fans:
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions, said he was “displeased” when Trump temporarily expanded the H-2B program in 2017. 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.
“It’s a bullshit law written to ensure that employers don’t have to hire Americans,” said Krikorian, who normally applauds the president’s immigration agenda.
Of course the goal is to avoid paying higher wages. Does anyone really think Trump and his organization cannot find a bartender in Palm Beach to work at Mar-a-Lago? They just don’t want to pay a living wage! Whether it is hiring American or buying American, Donald Trump and his family don’t walk the walk, they just talk the talk. After all, nearly every single item in Trump’s D.C. hotel was made overseas and favorite child Ivanka Trump’s entire $100 million clothing line is made entirely in Asia.
For the Trump family, it is not America first: it is clearly Trump family profits first.