Summary
Donald Trump, who has pledged to crack down on immigration, continues to hire foreign guest workers for his businesses at record levels.
In 2024, Trump’s companies, including Mar-a-Lago, his golf courses, and a Virginia winery, hired 209 foreign workers, nearly double the number from a decade ago.
Most were employed under H-2B visas, meant for seasonal jobs when American workers are unavailable.
Critics argue these programs undermine U.S. workers’ bargaining power, while Trump’s allies, like Project 2025, advocate for restricting such visas. Trump has distanced himself from these proposals while continuing to utilize the program.
It’s not that they don’t want to today. It’s that the logistics of deporting millions of people is a lot more than they realize.
They’ll get started, all gung ho, realize they’ve bit off more than they can chew, notice that the oppression has made it so that the cost of undocumented labor goes down (because what are they gonna do, complain?), and then slow the roll of disappearing people to a manageable level while still keeping the remainder well oppressed.
The tariffs just work another side of that equation. Tariffs raise prices on manufactured goods across the board, for foreign and domestic products, because if you’re a domestic manufacturer of widgets, all you have to do is set the price of your widget just under the price of foreign widgets.
Put some cheap labor on top of that, your labor expense goes down, and you get more profit.
I believe I already covered this when I said “As for the exact number, it depends on the courts blocking things, the basic logistics of getting enough ICE …”
That’s the only limiting factor.
This is where we disagree. They may be forced to be slow, but they will go hard and try to get around the obstacles.
Sigh, I brought up tariffs because people keep saying (essentially) “they can’t deport that many people, our economy depends on it”. Well guess what the economy depends on trade and they don’t care, they will put in tariffs. Just like they don’t care about the hit to the economy from deporting people.