Trump voters get screwed: Migrant labor edition

I like to think I’m an empathetic person, but there are some individuals I just can’t feel sorry for. And these people are first amongst them:

Small business owners who supported Donald Trump are complaining about troubles hiring foreign seasonal labor the Lexington Herald-Leader reports.

The newspaper interviewed multiple landscaping business owners who claim they are unable to hire Americans for the same wages.

Eddie Devine voted for Trump, but worries he may go out of business if he is unable to continue hiring 20 foreign workers a season though the H-2B visa program.

“I feel like I’ve been tricked by the devil,” Devine admitted. “I feel so stupid.”

They voted for a candidate who loudly made closing the borders his top priority, and now they’re shocked to find seasonal workers have a hard time getting into the country. And they own businesses that depend on seasonal workers.

“Stupid” may be a soft term.

Incidentally, file this away into that ever-growing archive for the next time you hear someone talk about foreigners “taking our jobs”:

“We live and die by these visas,” said Ken Monin, owner of Monin Construction. “Last year we about went bankrupt. The workers we were supposed to get in March didn’t show up until August because they couldn’t get visas.”

“Americans don’t want most of these jobs,” Monin claimed.

This is reminiscent of what happened in Georgia in 2012, when a harsh new anti-immigration law that kept undocumented migrants out resulted in $140 million in crops rotting in the fields because – and this will shock some people – Americans don’t want the sort of miserable, low-paying jobs that attracts seasonal workers. That’s atop all the other data that shows that immigrant workers, including undocumented ones, do not “steal” jobs. But no anti-immigration crusader would dare let facts get in the way of their xenophobic narrative.

(via @fark)