Thread: Shocker: Trump used illegal immigrant labor at his golf club

Shocker: Trump used illegal immigrant labor at his golf club

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA / SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Friday, December 14th, 2018 at 12:02am



CHICAGO – Since President Donald Trump is so fond of giving his political nemeses pet names, allow me to give him one, too: Teflon Don. Nothing sticks to this guy.

He said it himself back in 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

And if he were to say today, “I could employ illegal immigrants even though I say I’m tough on immigration,” his most ardent supporters wouldn’t blink twice.

Hiring undocumented immigrants, of course, has been an unforgivable political sin. It derailed the nominations of two candidates for attorney general in 1993 – Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood; two nominations for labor secretary – Linda Chavez in 2001 and Andrew Puzder in 2017; and a pick for homeland security secretary in 2004 – Bernard Kerik. Today, employing people who are residing in the country illegally would surely torpedo the careers of most incumbents or candidates for office.
But few Trump supporters were rushing to point out the president’s hypocrisy when The New York Times reported last week that unlawfully present immigrants were working by using phony employment documents at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.

Make no mistake about it: If President Barack Obama had done the same thing during his tenure, he would have been run out of the White House on a rail by an angry mob.

Yet when Trump does anything that directly undermines his campaign promises, his base always seems to find a way to turn it around.

“No good deed goes unpunished, even when the beneficiary is in the country illegally,” wrote Eddie Scarry, a conservative opinion writer for The Washington Examiner, in reference to reports that the housekeepers who came forward about working with fake documents said Trump had tipped them generously.

Scarry didn’t grapple with the threatening and demeaning comments that Victorina Morales said she faced from her immediate supervisors because they knew she was working illegally.

In Scarry’s assessment, the salient fact was that a prominent publication had the gall to elevate the undocumented women’s stories, not the fact that Trump’s golf club is allegedly hiring unlawfully present immigrants for jobs that should, in Trump’s stated vision of the U.S. workforce, go to lawful permanent residents and native-born workers.

No mention at all of the Times’ most damning revelation – that although Trump has, in the past, bragged about using E-Verify, the electronic system that checks potential employees’ identity against the databases of the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Securityto weed out unauthorized workers at his work sites and properties, his staff knowingly hired undocumented workers.

According to the Times, an online list of employers who are registered to use the E-Verify system includes Mr. Trump’s golf club in North Carolina – a state where E-Verify is required – but the Bedminster club in New Jersey, which is not required to do the federal check, doesn’t appear.

According to Morales and another worker, Sandra Diaz, supervisors wielded their power by simultaneously helping employees obtain fake work documentation from other employees, sometimes even helping to pay for the false documents, so they could stay on the job, and by calling them “donkeys,” and “stupid illegal immigrants” with less intelligence than a dog. There were also alleged threats of deportation and, sometimes, physical force.

Morales took major risks to come forward but did so to stick up for others suffering in silence.

“We are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way (Trump) talks about us when he knows that we are here helping him make money,” Morales told the Times. “We sweat it out to attend to his every need and have to put up with his humiliation.”

That humiliation started when Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 by referring to immigrants south of the border as criminals and rapists.

Well, you have to hand it to him – when Trump made those comments, he also said of the immigrants that, “some, I assume, are good people.”

That’s surely how he thought of Morales, who was given both a certificate of outstanding service from the club and a special pin in the shape of an American flag bearing a Secret Service logo.

If this latest uncovering of the opportunistic, two-faced nature of our president teaches us anything, it’s that he’s right – in his most passionate supporters’ eyes, he can do no wrong. And no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever sway them to view him as the hypocrite everyone else sees.

E-mail estherjcepeda@washpost.com, Twitter, @estherjcepeda. (c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group.

https://www.abqjournal.com/1257457/s...golf-club.html

NY Times: Immigrants ‘didn’t need papers’ to Work at Trump Golf Club

SAT, DEC 8TH, 2018 BY LEO VIDAL

Yesterday two additional undocumented immigrant women spoke out who had worked at the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey. These women said that not only did they lack proper legal status to work, but that the people in charge of running the club were well aware of their illegal status.
According to the New York Times:

“One of the women said that she was allowed to submit fraudulent documents by the Trump employee who interviewed her for her job.”

The stories of these two women were reported just a day after an immigrant from Guatemala, Victorina Morales, told the Times that she has worked without legal status as a housekeeper at the club for over five years.

Morales said she decided to come out into the open because of Trump’s negative public comments about undocumented immigrants.She also reported many demeaning words directed at her from her supervisor at Trump’s golf club.

It is significant that these workers have chosen to finally speak publicly about their jobs at a business owned by the Trump Organization.

Stopping the flow of illegal immigration and saving jobs for American workers has been a key part of Trump’s campaigns and his presidency.

And now four women have said that Trump’s management employees at the club knew they were working illegally.

One of the women said that she and another woman were hired in 2016 at the golf club after producing fake work documents.

She said they were told by the woman interviewing them, that they should not discuss their undocumented status.

“We said the papers are not good. She said it didn’t matter, but don’t talk about it,” recalled the woman, who is from Mexico.

She said that the person who interviewed them filled out the application for them and took their fake Social Security and permanent resident cards.

After Trump began attacking illegal immigration and saying that criminals were flowing across the Mexican border, many of his golf club employees were puzzled.

“I commented with other workers, ‘How can he call us criminals and drug addicts when we are right here working?’” she said, though she added that it did not prompt her to quit. “Our need was greater. Immigrants put up with a lot.”

The other woman said she applied for a job at Trump’s club after she heard from friends that “you didn’t need papers” to work there. The woman also said she handed over her false documents to her manager when she was hired, and no questions were asked.

“As far as I knew, most people didn’t have papers,” the woman told the Times.
Joyce Phipps, an immigration lawyer at a nonprofit legal-aid organization near Bedminster, N.J., said most of her clients have been employees at the Trump golf club. Most of them, she said, were not legally documented and came to her seeking help to legalize their status.

“It is such common knowledge, you have no idea,” Ms. Phipps said. “There are some people who I know got their green cards because they happened to marry a U.S. citizen, but they worked there at Trump’s club for years undocumented.”

We didn’t need it, but here is another example of the massive hypocrisy of Donald Trump. He has gained power through exploiting immigrants politically, and he has gotten rich by exploiting immigrants financially.

https://www.politicususa.com/2018/12...golf-club.html

In view of these recent reports, Trump needs to ensure all of his businesses sign up for the voluntary E-verify program immediately! Protect yourself, Mr. President!

Trump no longer has any management involvement in his companies and hasn't since January 12, 2017, several days before he was Inaugurated.

Hard to justify this though what trump did is small potatos compared to Obama's DACA program which let MILLIONS of illegals work here.

The women said Trump didn't know anything about it. They said they used fake documents to get the jobs.

JUDY .
YOUR ONE SMART LADY AS I SAID BE FOR I LIKE YOUR POST
SBX

Originally Posted by southBronx

JUDY .
YOUR ONE SMART LADY AS I SAID BE FOR I LIKE YOUR POST
SBX

I like your posts too southBronx! I hope you are doing well and have a wonderful Christmas this year!!