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Trump Allegedly Used Foreign Models Working In America Without Visas
By
David Colon
Published Aug 31, 2016
Modified Aug 31, 2016
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Joe Raedle/Getty Images
By
David Colon
Published Aug 31, 2016
Modified Aug 31, 2016
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When it comes to Donald Trump and immigration, there's one thing we know: if you came here without following the law, you're out! Unless you're an undocumented Polish laborer building Trump Tower. But hey, that was thirty-five years ago. Trump wouldn't keep exploiting workers. Like, say, models. He definitely wouldn't run a modeling agency that encouraged models to be here without visas, right? Oh, uh, I guess he would do that.
Mother Jones spoke to three models who worked for Trump through his Trump Model Management company, all three of whom told the magazine that the company employed them despite the fact that they didn't have work visas when they began modeling. One model, Rachel Blais, told Mother Jones she worked for six months in 2004 without a visa after coming to New York from Canada, but at least in her case the company helped her get one.
Two other anonymous models who spoke to the magazine said that they didn't ever have work visas during their time modeling for Trump Model Management. They also said representatives from the organization "encouraged them to deceive customs officials about why they were visiting the United States and told them to lie on customs forms about where they intended to live," according to Mother Jones.
Beyond the obvious hypocrisy of Donald Trump employing undocumented workers, the models said that their status made them afraid to complain about their working conditions. Those conditions allegedly included almost a dozen models living in the same basement apartment and getting charged $1,200 to $1,600 per month to sleep in bunk beds, all for the privilege of getting work through Trump's organization. "Anna," one of the anonymous models Mother Jones spoke to, said she "was on edge" for the entire three months she worked for Trump Modeling without a visa in 2009.
Trump's campaign didn't answer any questions Mother Jones sent them, but the practice of using undocumented models is also said to be widespread in the modeling industry. And after almost a full year of demonizing the undocumented, maybe Donald Trump will learn to pretend to have some compassion for them after his big trip to Mexico (which will go tremendously well, it'll be fantastic) ahead of an immigration policy speech this week. Of course, that would leave him suddenly without a base of support, so he'll probably just keep importing young women to work in his model mines and railing against Mexicans and Arabs.
Tagged
donald trump
election 2016
David Colon
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