Think Progress (Opinion)
By Esther Lee
July 8, 2015
As
a real estate tycoon, Donald Trump built up and has given his name to
clothing lines, hotels, resorts, golf courses, a winery, and apartment
buildings. And for a man
who has unapologetically characterized Mexican immigrants as rapists
and drug dealers, and has said that infectious diseases are spilling
across the border, Trump has decided to work in industries where it’s
impossible to avoid the Latino immigrants he is
maligning.
A
2010 Current Population Survey found that more than 200,00 foreign-born
workers work in the hospitality industry, nearly 1.2 million
foreign-born workers hold construction
occupations, and another 1.3 million foreign-born workers are employed
in the food service industry. The data doesn’t break down the figures by
nationality and legal status, though a Southern Poverty Law Center
survey found that Latino immigrants are most
often employed in construction, factory work, cleaning, and restaurant
work.
A
2011 National Council of La Raza study corroborated those results,
finding that nearly one in five employees in the accommodation industry
is Latino. The group is also
overrepresented in “nearly all the major service jobs in the
accommodation industry,” the NCLR study stated.
For
Trump, that overrepresentation of Latino laborers could very well mean
that at least some of his workers are from the country that he’s made
inflammatory remarks about.
And if he took a stroll through some of the properties that he owns
long after business hours are over, he might encounter many of these
“good people“:
Construction workers
As
the Washington Post reported this week, Trump relies on both
undocumented and legal immigrants on the construction site of his hotel
in Washington, D.C. Trump has also
put undocumented immigrants on the payroll in the past. In the 1980s
and 1990s, Trump was embroiled in a 15-year lawsuit for allegedly
cheating 200 undocumented Polish immigrants out of meager wages and
fringe benefits during the demolition of the building
that preceded Trump Tower, the New York Times reported in 1998.
Trump
doesn’t think it’s “crass” to tell people that he’s “really rich,” (he
has a net worth anywhere between $4.1 billion and $8.7 billion), but his
wealth isn’t solely
from his own doing. He likely had help — as he currently does in D.C. —
from immigrants like Ramon Alvarez, a window worker, who told the
Washington Post, “Do you think that when we’re hanging out there from
the eighth floor that we’re raping or selling drugs?
We’re risking our lives and our health. A lot of the chemicals we deal
with are toxic.”
A
2013 Center for Popular Democracy report found that the majority of
construction site accident victims in New York State are Latinos and/or
immigrant workers. Only 34
percent of all construction workers in New York state are Latino and/or
an immigrant, but they comprise 60 percent of all OSHA-investigated
“fall from an elevation fatalities” in the state. A 2008 Pew Hispanic
study found that 17 percent of construction workers
were undocumented.
Some
of these workers are subject to wage theft. Fernando, an undocumented
construction worker and painter, told ThinkProgress in March that he
joined an union because
“the contractor refused to pay me and they helped me get my money
back.” He was also serious injured twice on the job, once in Galveston,
Texas after Hurricane Ike.
Golf course maintenance workers
About
180,000 maintenance workers keep the nation’s 15,619 golf courses green
and pristine across the country. As a four-part Golf Digest series
documented, immigrants
do most of the maintenance work on golf courses. “We get up early and
try to stay out of the way,” one golf course worker told Golf Digest.
“We don’t know anything about the players, and they don’t know anything
about us.”
Most
of the time, American workers just aren’t “willing to do those jobs,”
Chava McKeel, the associate director of government relations for the
GCSAA said.
“The
Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) estimates
that two-thirds of the maintenance workforce is Latino, with the largest
presence in California,
Texas and Florida (85 percent), followed by the Northwest (50 percent)
and the Midwest/Mideast (10 to 20 percent),” Golf Digest reported. A
2008 Cornell study backs up the findings, noting that superintendents
responding to their survey indicated that “72
percent of their workforce at the peak of the season was Hispanic.”
The
Trump organization owns seven golf courses throughout the country. The
PGA of America said on Tuesday that the Grand Slam of Golf tournament
won’t be played at the
Los Angeles golf club.
Restaurant workers
The
2008 Pew Hispanic study found that about one in ten workers in the
restaurant industry is an immigrant. Of those, about 20 percent of
restaurant cooks and 30 percent
of dishwashers are undocumented, Seattle’s KUOW reported.
Latinos
are “disproportionately likely to be dishwashers, dining room
attendants, or cooks, also relatively low-paid occupations,” an Economic
Policy Institute report
stated last year. The study also found that “one in six restaurant
workers, or 16.7 percent, live below the official poverty line” while
“more than two in five restaurant workers, or 43.1 percent, live below
twice the poverty line.”
Restaurateur
and TV star Anthony Bourdain told the Houston Press in 2007, “It is
undeniable…I know very few chefs who’ve even heard of a U.S.-born
citizen coming in the
door to ask for a dishwasher, night clean-up or kitchen prep job.”
Though
Trump is mainly in the hotel business, his establishments have
restaurants, like the Trump Grill located in the atrium of the Trump
Tower and The Terrace at Trump
Chicago. However, his recent comments are threatening to derail plans
for a new restaurant at the planned Trump International Hotel in D.C. At
least 2,510 people have already signed a petition asking Chef Jose
Andres to back out of working at the restaurant.
Hotel workers
According
to the 2015 Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are about 36,700 Latinos
working in the building and grounds cleaning and maintenance
occupations, such as janitors,
maids and housekeepers, pest control workers, and grounds maintenance
staff. There are also an additional 25,100 hotel, motel, and resort desk
clerks who identify as Latino.
A
2009 study of workers across 50 U.S. hotels found that Latino women are
twice as likely to be injured as white house keepers and 1.5 times more
likely to be injured
than men. The New York Times reported that housekeepers have a high
injury rate since they have to do repetitive tasks, lift heavy
mattresses, and work quickly to clean rooms.
“I
have worked as a housekeeper for about 13 years. I work in pain
constantly. My body aches all over, but most of all my back from bending
and lifting throughout the
day,” one housekeeper who worked at a Hyatt hotel said, according to a
Work Safe report.
Unlike
Trump, some conservative hoteliers have recognized the necessity of
immigrant workers. J.W. Bill Marriott, then CEO and now Executive
Chairman and Chairman of the
Board of Marriott International, has called for immigration reform
several times in 2007, 2010, and again in 2012.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment