Donald Trump is under attack for hiring foreigners, especially Romanians, to work at his club in Florida (nytimes). In a country with low labor force participation (compare to Singapore), it does seem surprising that Americans aren’t hired for these jobs. I interviewed some shopkeepers in 2011 and wrote “Polish accents on Martha’s Vineyard”. One explanation is that collecting welfare is a superior alternative for American citizens, but isn’t available to foreigners (see The Redistribution Recession for a quantitative analysis of how many Americans don’t work because the government gives them money conditional on them not working).
[Note that a foreign worker who has sex with an American and ends up with custody of the resulting child can have money wired back to the home country at the child support rates that prevail in the state where the sexual act(s) occurred. This will be a lot more lucrative than the $10.60/hour W-2 wage. Wikipedia says that the “net average monthly wage” in Romania is about $463, which works out to $5,556. The child support cashflow out of having sex on Martha’s Vineyard, for example, should be a minimum of about $1 million under the Massachusetts guidelines (assuming a defendant earning at least $250,000/year, which is a safe assumption among hotel guests on the Vineyard!). That’s $40,000 per year for 23 years at the top of the guidelines, after which judges typically extrapolate at an 11 percent rate. Thus child support will pay more than 7X better than working back in Romania. The cash value of a child conceived in a room at Donald Trump’s club would likely be determined under Florida family law and thus would typically be less than half compared to if the parties had sex in Massachusetts. The official Florida chart shows that having sex with an American earning $2100 per month ($25,200), after taxes, will yield the same revenue as the average job in Romania.]
Readers: What do we think of Trump’s Romanian-staffed club? Outraged because he isn’t giving Americans a chance to cut short their 99 weeks of Xbox? Proud because we’re rich enough to pay our fellow citizens to rest on the sofa while foreigners come here to serve us drinks?
Ugh, Phil, your thinking is dated. Why would a nice Romanian girl want to travel all the way to the US, get pregnant, then spend the next 21 years away from your home just to extort support payments for a single child? Plus, this strategy excludes men and already married people.
No, the newer simpler way for EU residents to profit is to simply hop a train to Sweden or the UK then claim welfare benefits for your spouse and all your children back in Romania. The EU technocrats have generously decided the nation you reside in must pay the benefits at the local rate for you and your entire family, even if your family is still living back in Romania. And since Romania is so far from London, how is the local council supposed to know if you really have 1 child or 5? Take a job or two under the table, create a fake identity or two, and you can be livin’ large, just visiting the UK once in a while to collect checks.
Sadly this scheme is being threaten by unenlightened xenophobic racist nazi Brits who are threatening to exit the EU.
Donald Trump appears to disagree with your welfare argument. This is form the NY Times article:
Asked why his club must seek so many foreign workers when Americans have applied for the same positions, Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview from Mar-a-Lago this month: “The only reason they wouldn’t get a callback is that they weren’t qualified, for some reason. There are very few qualified people during the high season in the area.”
Of course, both you and Mr. Trump appear to disregard the way that markets are supposed to work. If he wanted to hire Americans, he could just pay much more than other local hotels and restaurants.
I hope that Trump explains the business reasons for hiring foreigners, and that the voters are disgusted with our immigration policies. #Trump2016
Donald has the same hiring practices for his wives.
@Vince,
Please explain how “markets are supposed to work”. Why should Trump pay more for hired help than necessary??
I don’t think THAT is how markets are supposed to work. Or at least free markets…
billg: The Romanian gal gets pregnant in the U.S., but goes home to give birth and stays in Romania while the money arrives every month. Is explained in http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ChildSupportLitigationWithoutMarriage
“this strategy excludes men and already married people.”
It works just as well if she’s already married back in Romania. She splits the proceeds with her husband.
@billg: Supposedly europhiliac countries like Germany and the Netherlands do not pay benefits to new arrivals. It’s unclear why the UK does, but it’s not because of EU directives.
British Job Seeker Allowance is something like 50 GBP a month, which is why so many British nationals prefer to claim benefits in other EU countries.
And any ‘generous’ decision made by ‘EU technocrats’ has to be approved and ratified by members of the national cabinets and parliaments. It’s not just Brussels that made things the way they are now.
@michiel: Interesting article. Actually, though, British Job Seeker Allowance is around 300GBP a month, if you’re 25 or older:
https://www.gov.uk/jobseekers-allowance/what-youll-get
Michiel, benefits from host EU country for stay at home children of EU-immigrant worker’s are being paid out not solely by the UK, but also Germany, France, Ireland, etc., an EU-wide agreement. Presumably because it is cheaper for the hosts to avail themselves of the fluctuating, in places transient or seasonal, workforce, than to have to cater for child and second parent-child-minders, or build local kindergartens, care infrastructure, etc.
Now that David Cameron has wrung some (pretty small and conditional) benefit restrictions out of Brussels, also Germany and others will follow suit. This worried a Polish Foreign Affairs Dept. flunkey interviewed on the steps there afterwards that this decision will affect their “German” workers more (there are far more Poles working across the border, 800,000?, than in the UK), than their “British” ones. He mentioned total numbers of children receiving benefits from both these countries which I haven’t noted down, but they sounded like around 10% of their “exported” workers in each place were entitled to them, nor would they lose them entirely or any time soon.Those benefits were never available to the new migrants from outside the EU, and poster billg simply parrots ignorant LePenist/equiv. “Europe for Europeans” FUD and agitprop.
As for working Romanians, I don’t know any; I think they mainly emigrate to France & other Mediterranean countries (also see my ObMovieAnalogy). I do, however, know of 2 Romanian working girls (women: I know they are cisgendered women, but bear with me here for a mo). Judging by that my limited ocular sample alone, they seem to be pretty adaptable and supple a nation.
Alina Cojocaru, 34, principal ballerina at the English National Ballet in London, UK; and
Becka Avery a.k.a. Ashley Sky, 23(?) – see her GIF-animated, professionally done “CV” there; 2 years ago she claimed to be a 21yo Romanian willing to model & travel all over the globe; also fluent in Spanish. She seems to have found some steady work, could be The Donald for all I know, so she abandoned her Twitter account.