Contributors

Tuesday, July 07, 2015

Illegal Immigrants Working on Trump's Hotel?

Donald Trump made a lot of noise at the announcement of his presidential campaign. But the thing that raised the most attention was his comment about Mexican immigrants:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Most other Republican candidates have repudiated Trump, except for Ted Cruz, who congratulated Trump for his comments.

The thing is, while Trump is bellowing about illegal immigrants, he's employing them to build his hotel:
Interviews with about 15 laborers helping renovate the Old Post Office Pavilion revealed that many of them had crossed the U.S-Mexico border illegally before they eventually settled in the Washington region to build new lives.

Several of the men, who hail mostly from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, have earned U.S. citizenship or legal status through immigration programs targeting Central Americans fleeing civil wars or natural disasters. Others quietly acknowledged that they remain in the country illegally.
Latinos make up about 25% of the construction workforce. It's an open secret that Latino immigrants are widely employed in construction: about 29% are undocumented.

This is especially true in states like Texas, where private-sector unions have been completely dismantled. Companies have little interest in ensuring that construction workers are citizens and documented immigrants: they just want to pay workers as little as possible, and illegal immigrants are willing to work for much less than unionized Americans.

Trump's legal counsel said he will take no responsibility for this situation: he'll just blame the subcontractor.
“Mr. Trump, who is the 100 percent owner of the Old Post Office, hired one of the largest contractors in the world to act as the general contractor,” Cohen said in a telephone interview. “That company is Lend Lease. They then go out and employ subcontractors to work for them. The obligation to check all workers on site is exclusive to Lend Lease. This of course assumes that the assertion regarding the employees’ status is accurate.”
In other words, Trump is shocked -- I tell you -- shocked to find out that the Mexicans he insulted in his announcement are the very people building his fancy hotel.

Trump always talks about how smart he is, he brags about being god-damned lying son of a bitch who screws over everyone he does business with. Is his entire presidential campaign nothing more than a bargaining tactic to intimidate construction workers on his sites so he can pay them less?

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