Trump Administration Sues Facebook for Engaging in Same Hiring Practices as Trump’s Own Companies

The Trump Dept. of Justice is suing Facebook over its alleged practice of hiring foreign workers into jobs that could be filled by Americans workers – a practice President Donald Trump’s own golf resorts reportedly also engage in, heavily.

The Trump Dept. of Justice is “accusing the social-media company of illegally reserving high-paying jobs for immigrant workers it was sponsoring for permanent residence, rather than searching adequately for available U.S. workers who could fill the positions,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

The “Justice Department’s civil-rights division said Facebook inadequately advertised at least 2,600 positions between 2018 and 2019 that were filled by immigrants on H-1B high-skill visas when the company was applying to sponsor those workers for permanent residency, known as green cards.”

But President Trump’s own resorts are notorious for hiring immigrant workers – even ones who are undocumented – for jobs that U.S. workers could perform.

“3 Trump properties posted 144 openings for seasonal jobs. Only one went to a US worker,” Vox reported in 2018.

“A Vox analysis of hiring records for seasonal workers at three Trump properties in New York and Florida revealed that only one out of 144 jobs went to a US worker from 2016 to the end of 2017. Foreign guest workers with H-2B visas got the rest.”

That’s just one of many examples.

“For nearly two decades, the Trump Organization has relied on a roving crew of Latin American employees to build fountains and waterfalls, sidewalks and rock walls at the company’s winery and its golf courses from New York to Florida,” The Washington Post reported in 2019.

“President Trump ‘doesn’t want undocumented people in the country,’ said one worker, Jorge Castro, a 55-year-old immigrant from Ecuador without legal status who left the company in April after nine years. ‘But at his properties, he still has them.'”

“If you’re a good worker, papers don’t matter,” Castro said, a comment that has been echoed by other workers at Trump properties.

That same year The Palm Beach Post reported, “President Donald Trump aims to hire dozens of foreign workers in Palm Beach County during the 2019-2020 tourist season, continuing his longstanding practice of recruiting laborers from Romania and elsewhere.”

The President, the Post added, “aims to hire 80 at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach and 14 at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter.”