Trump Org Keeps Bringing In Foreign Workers To Staff Its Clubs And Winery

Forbes Breaking News

President Donald Trump has recently acknowledged concerns from the agriculture and hospitality industries that his strict immigration policies are making it harder to retain long-time workers—even as his own company continues importing foreign workers through legal visa programs to staff its clubs and Virginia vineyard. Forbes staff writer Zach Everson joins "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss.   Read the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/06/12/trump-organization-foreign-workers-visa-hiring-mar-a-lago-golf-clubs-winery/

Transcript

00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now

00:07is my Forbes colleague, staff writer Zach Everson. Zach, thanks so much for joining me.

00:12Thanks for bringing me back. We get to revisit one of the greatest dates here.

00:17Exactly. And you and I have talked about this before, but it's seen in a new light now,

00:22especially because when you look back to November 2024, President Trump won in large part because

00:28voters thought that he would be able to handle big issues like the economy, like immigration better

00:33than Vice President Kamala Harris. And we're going to be talking about immigration because the Trump

00:38administration's hardline stance on immigration in the second term, as well as ICE deportations and

00:43raids, have been the cause for protests popping up in Los Angeles, as well as the rest of the country.

00:49He recently seemed to semi-walk back this hardline stance. I want to read a recent post from him.

00:54This is what he said, quote, our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business

00:59have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good longtime workers

01:05away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases, the criminals

01:10allowed into our country by the very stupid Biden open borders policy are applying for those jobs.

01:16This is not good. We must protect our farmers, but get the criminals out of the USA. Changes are coming.

01:21So it sounds like he's someone who was in the hotels industry. I mean, Trump hotels everywhere. I mean,

01:29talk to us about where the Trump administration is on immigration and foreign workers in the United

01:33States in general. Yeah, I mean, he still is in the hotel industry. You know, all of his businesses

01:39are in a trust, but it is a revocable trust. He can profit from it at any time. He's the sole

01:46beneficiary, sole donor. Don Jr.'s the trustee. I mean, it's pretty paper thin there. You won't be

01:53surprised to learn that the Trump organization has imported almost 1900 foreign workers since 2008,

02:02according to data with the Department of Labor. This is all publicly available information on its

02:08website. This is how many they've applied to. We don't know how many they've actually hired,

02:12but that is the amount they've requested. And that goes right up into 2025, where they have requested

02:18to hire 31 short-term temporary foreign workers to work at their winery down in the Charlottesville,

02:25Virginia area. So this is an ongoing practice of President Trump's businesses,

02:31regardless of what he might be saying politically.

02:34So President Trump, I mean, his big thing is make America great again. He wants to keep jobs here.

02:39He wants to hire American. I mean, that's been his shtick for a decade.

02:43Seems a little bit at odds with what the Trump organization is doing. How does he square that circle?

02:50Yeah, it really does seem at odds. And he squared it a few times previously. I haven't heard him

02:56recently say this, but in the past, he has said, like, you know, it's OK. We don't want foreign

03:01workers taking American jobs unless it's like short-term temporary labor. Those are OK. And that's a

03:07line he often loses the audience at. He's not really understanding why he's differentiating there.

03:13Not his biggest applause line, but he will throw that out there in the past. So, I mean, it's a legal

03:18program. They are able to do this, assuming that they've tried to hire local Americans who can do

03:25the job and they can't find willing people to do it. They are then able to reach out to the Department

03:30of Labor and see if they can bring short-term foreign workers. So, you know, every year going back

03:34to 2008, which was the last year data were available, the Trump organization has claimed

03:39that it has been unable to find enough American workers to do the jobs at its resort, winery,

03:45Mar-a-Lago, and that it's had to bring in foreign workers to do those jobs.

03:50I mean, that's interesting that that's not an applause line, considering it seems like it's

03:54a caveat for his business. Oh, hire American, except if it's a short-term foreign worker to

04:00fill the gaps here. But talk to us about those rules exactly. How is this legal in Trump 2.0?

04:07Yeah, so it's a really convoluted process how U.S. organizations are able to do this,

04:14in that, you know, first they have to go ahead and reach out to the Department of Labor,

04:19showing that they cannot get enough American workers. Then they need to petition the Department

04:24of Homeland Security, that they can get enough visas to bring these people in. And then the

04:29State Department would issue the visas abroad. So you've got three different cabinets that are

04:33involved in this entire process. So it's not really a simple one to do. I mean, there are a whole

04:39bunch of attorneys out there who this is their job, you know, helping industries get these visas.

04:44So it's a bit of a cottage industry out there.

04:46So these foreign workers are hired for short-term work on Trump clubs and the winery. Talk to us

04:53about what those jobs exactly are. So if the winery, it's out there working as a farm worker,

04:59the visa is actually called the H-2A for that one. The other ones would be an H-2B visa. It's more for

05:05a service job, working in housekeeping, managerial positions, kitchen jobs. And they pay anywhere from

05:14about $14 an hour to around $23 an hour is what the Trump organizations advertise those jobs for.

05:22At the top of this conversation, I read a social media post from President Trump who said that he's

05:27been hearing from farmers, from people in the hotel industry, that his hardline immigration policy is

05:33taking away good workers from their businesses. There's an argument on the other side to be made

05:38that maybe these workers or these businesses in the first place, rather, shouldn't be exploiting

05:43undocumented migrant workers. Has the Trump organization ever hired an undocumented migrant

05:49worker at one of their locations? They have. They have. Back in around 2019,

05:57the club in Bedminster, New Jersey, it's probably the one that he goes to the most outside of Mar-a-Lago,

06:02fired about a dozen undocumented reporters, according to a report at the Times from the Washington Post.

06:07And this was after they'd employed them for years. So it's not like these people just came in and were

06:13quickly turned out to be undocumented, but they were at the long time employees and were let out.

06:19And we know before, President Trump has tried putting tougher immigration laws and policies on

06:25different countries. Do we have any indication of where these foreign workers are from?

06:29We don't know exactly where they're from. We just know that the Trump organization has applied to

06:36bring them in. We don't know exactly how many they filled, who came in. There is a list of countries

06:42that are eligible, though. It's only around 90 countries that are eligible for their citizens to

06:46have to get these H-2A and H-2P visas. So it does include some countries that Trump has railed against

06:52in the past, including some African nations, Haiti as well.

06:55And, Zach, as we've seen really in the past week and a half, protests erupt all over the country

07:02over President Trump's really aggressive immigration policy. And people in this country,

07:08critics, are really upset by it. I mean, where does this story, where does your reporting

07:13fit into this larger puzzle when it comes to President Trump's immigration policy?

07:18Well, you know, according to people who've been sharing it on social media,

07:22it's rape and hypocrisy, is how other people have gone ahead and put that. You know, it depends.

07:27It's a legal program. He hasn't done anything that we've seen to try to get rid of this program.

07:33He has certainly, like I said, given those nuanced little carve-outs in his speeches in the past,

07:36explained the importance of this program. But, you know, it's certainly, you know, he's been very

07:41anti-immigrant, anti-foreign worker, except in the situation where it benefits his businesses

07:49to do so, which is not uncommon for what we've been visiting yet.

07:52It's just a citrus phone in August.

07:55Well, Zach Everson, always appreciate our conversations. Thanks for joining me.

07:59Thanks for having me back. Appreciate it.

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