President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club has applied for permission to hire 61 foreign workers to serve as waiters and cooks during the winter social season in Palm Beach, Fla., according to data posted this week by the Labor Department.
The latest data was posted late Thursday on the department's website: Trump's club has asked to hire 21 cooks from overseas and employ them from October to May. At the end of that term, the workers would be expected to return home.
Earlier on Thursday, another posting showed Trump's club also wants to hire 40 foreigners to serve as wait staff at the club. Mar-a-Lago is a for-profit social club, catering to the wealthy wintertime residents of Palm Beach. It also houses private living quarters for Trump -- who has visited repeatedly, and dubbed the club the "Winter White House."
The postings show that - despite Trump's insistence that immigration is holding down wages and crowding out native-born American workers -- his club believes it cannot find any Americans in South Florida who are qualified to hold two common restaurant-industry jobs.
The application to hire waiters was first reported Thursday by BuzzFeed.
The Mar-a-Lago Club has repeatedly used foreign workers in the past. Last year, his company applied for permission to hire waiters, housekeepers and cooks.
The club wants to pay cooks slightly less than in 2017: $13.31 per hour, down 3 cents from the year before. The base salary his club is offering waiters is higher in 2018: from $11.88 per hour last year to $12.68 per hour this year.
A Section on 07/07/2018