Demonizing immigrants played a key role in Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency, just as cracking down on “illegal” border crossings and whipping the base into a frenzy over a so-called migrant “invasion” has been a regular feature of his time in office and reelection efforts. But undocumented immigrants have also served another, lesser known but nevertheless vital function in the president’s life: providing cheap labor at his businesses. And not just, like, in years past, or in the first few months of his presidency, but as of—what’s that now?—today. Yes, it’s a tough job to foam at the mouth daily about people entering the country without going through the proper channels first, use it to justify separating families and sending people back to nations they’ve never known—all the while relying on them to keep your golf clubs running—but somebody’s got to do it!
The Washington Post reports that the Trump Organization currently employs a “roving crew of Latin American employees” to perform masonry and maintenance work at his winery and various golf clubs around the country. For almost two decades, the group has been comprised of workers who came into the US illegally—the penalty for which the president seemingly believes should be death—according to two former crew members. Another one, who still works for Trump, told reporters Joshua Partlow and David A. Fahrenthold that remains the case today. President Trump “doesn’t want undocumented people in the country,” said Jorge Castro, an Ecuadorian immigrant without legal status who left the company last spring after nine years. “But at his properties, he still has them.” He added: “If you’re a good worker, papers don’t matter.”
Last January, Eric Trump, who took over the day-to-day business with his brother, Don Jr., said that the Trump Organization was “making a broad effort to identify any employee who has given false and fraudulent documents to unlawfully gain employment,” and that any such individuals would be fired immediately. He also claimed that the company was implementing E-Verify, a program that lets employers check the immigration status of new hires “as soon as possible,” though—and please, find something to brace yourself against lest the shock of what you’re about to hear knock you flat on your back—nothing “changed on the Trump construction crew, according to current and former employees.”
It’s almost as though the president wants the political benefit of treating undocumented immigrants as subhuman menaces while simultaneously receiving the economic benefit of being able to hire people who he can pay less money and not provide health insurance, something his “they’re taking our jobs!” supporters would probably take issue with. (Trump “was saving a lot of money with us,” Castro, whose paychecks show that he made $19 an hour starting in 2016, and then $21 an hour in 2018, told the Post. According to a former carpenter on the crew, “the salary for that work,” which included long hours in the sun breaking rocks or digging trenches “was very low,” and he now earns twice as much doing similar work at a union job, where also receives benefits.) There’s also the uncomfortable matter of Trump’s business practice encouraging the very trend he supposedly believes is destroying the country:
The White House did not respond to the Post’s request for comment. The Trump Organization did not respond to specific questions about the legal status of workers at Mobile Payroll Construction—the official company, solely owned by Trump, that started paying the crew as of 2015—, saying in a statement “since this issue was first brought to our attention, we have taken diligent steps, including the use of E-Verify at all of our properties and companies. Those efforts continue and where an employee is found to have provided fake or fraudulent documentation to unlawfully gain employment, that individual will be terminated. Fortunately, among the thousands of individuals employed by our organization, we have encountered very few instances where this has occurred.”
Of course, no one would begrudge Trump for employing undocumented workers if he didn’t spend most of his waking hours railing against the scourge of illegal immigration or, y’know, rounding people up en masse for the crime of what apparently occurs daily at the Trump Organization:
+2/-0 TheCrow 8/8/2022 1:34:52 PM