Donald Trump at the Trump National Golf Club Westchester, New York, in June 2016.

Kena Betancur / AFP / Getty Images

As President Donald Trump continues to promote his agenda of restoring American jobs, the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, is seeking permission to bring foreign workers to serve as waiters and waitresses, according to a petition posted by the Department of Labor on Wednesday.

The workers are being sought under the federal H-2 visa program, which permits American employers to hire foreign laborers under temporary work visas as long as no qualified US workers want the jobs. The tony, private club, currently controlled by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, is located just 35 miles from New York City and its vast labor market. The petition to the Labor department effectively attests that there are no qualified American workers who want the jobs. The jobs pay $14.08 an hour. That’s a few dollars an hour higher than the average wage for waiters in the surrounding area. The posting also mentions the possibility of overtime, at $21.12, though it is not guaranteed.

No one from the golf course or the White House immediately responded to a request for comment Wednesday.

Businesses owned by President Trump or bearing his name have been big users of the controversial H-2 program in the past, seeking to hire at least 294 foreign guest workers since he launched his presidential campaign. Many work as servers and house cleaners at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate that has recently been termed the winter White House. Despite his focus on restoring American jobs, Trump has also maintained that it is “almost impossible” to find qualified Americans who want temporary jobs in the service industry such as those available at many of his clubs and resorts that rely on the visa program.

The waitstaff jobs are seasonal, with work beginning May 22 and ending Oct. 31. Three months prior experience is required. Housing is optionally provided, at a cost of up to $15.55 a week.

Since 2003, more than 100,000 foreigners have been brought in under the H-2 program each year.

Last fall, a special envoy from the United Nations said the federal guest worker program puts workers at risk of exploitation and even trafficking. A BuzzFeed News investigation in 2015 found that H-2 workers were often exploited, and sometimes raped or beaten. BuzzFeed News also found that many Americans were denied jobs in favor of guest workers. Trump companies have not been accused of abusing H-2 workers.

The Westchester golf club also sought temporary workers last year. That application stated that club members “require excellence in the Club’s services and facilities. However, the demographic makeup of the Westchester, NY area shows that the temporary workforce required to staff the many private country clubs, restaurants and hotels is not sufficient.”

Outside Your Bubble is a BuzzFeed News effort to bring you a diversity of thought and opinion from around the internet. If you don’t see your viewpoint represented, contact the curator at bubble@buzzfeed.com. Click here for more on Outside Your Bubble.

US President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference announcing Alexander Acosta as the new Labor Secretary nominee in the East Room at the White House on Feb. 16 in Washington, DC. The announcement comes a day after Andrew Puzder withdrew his nomination.

Mario Tama / Getty Images

A Virginia winery owned by President Donald Trump’s son Eric is seeking permission to import almost two dozen additional foreign workers, according to a petition posted by the Department of Labor on Thursday.

The Trump Winery, also known as Trump Vineyard Estates, LLC, is asking to bring in 23 workers this spring to plant and harvest grapes. The workers are being sought under the federal H-2 visa program, which permits American employers to hire foreign laborers under temporary work visas as long as no qualified US workers want the jobs. The job on the 1,300-acre estate could run through late October.

The latest request is in addition to six workers the winery sought in December. The jobs will pay $11.27 an hour and require workers to labor outside in weather as cold as 10 degrees while “on their feet in bent positions for long periods of time,” according to the job posting.

Since 2003, more than 100,000 foreigners have been brought in under the H-2 program each year. Businesses owned by President Trump or bearing his name have been big users of the program in the past, seeking to hire at least 286 foreign guest workers since he launched his presidential campaign. Many work as servers and house cleaners at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate that has recently been termed the Winter White House.

The president’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Trump Vineyards. In the past, Trump has said it is “almost impossible” to find Americans who want such jobs.

Some, however, have criticized the president for vowing to restore American jobs while relying on imported foreign guestworkers.

“With Trump, hypocrisy know no bounds,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona who has called for better conditions for guest workers and whose father came to the US under a precursor to the H-2 program.

Last fall, a special envoy from the United Nations raised concerns about the federal guest worker program, saying it puts workers at risk of exploitation and even trafficking. A BuzzFeed News investigation in 2015 found that H-2 workers were often exploited, and sometimes raped or beaten. BuzzFeed News also found that many Americans were denied jobs in favor of guest workers. Trump companies have not been accused of abusing H-2 workers.

The winery’s website says it is not owned by the president but rather by his son Eric, who was given the operation by his father in 2012, according to news reports.

Still, in the midst of the Republican primary campaign last year, Trump held a press conference at one of his golf clubs and claimed ownership of it. Speaking before a table stacked high with wine, he said: “I own it 100%, no mortgage, no debt.” Shortly before he took office, Trump announced that he was turning his businesses over to his children to run.

数ヵ月間にわたるメモが集められた調査文書には、ロシア政府とトランプ陣営の接触に関する情報が含まれている。また、ロシア側が記録したという性的な行為に関する描写も含まれている。そこに書かれているのは、具体的だが、未証明かつ検証できない可能性もある容疑だ。

アメリカとヨーロッパのBuzzFeed News記者は、文書に書かれた疑惑を調査してきたが、立証もしくは反証はいまだできていない。

CNNが1月10日に報じたところによると、この調査文書に関して2ページの概要が、オバマ大統領とトランプ次期大統領の双方に渡された。

BuzzFeed Newsが調査文書を全文公開

BuzzFeed Newsは、米国政府の上層部で出回っているトランプ氏にまつわる疑惑に関して、米国民自身が判断できるように、入手した調査文書（35ページ）を全文公開した。

調査文書は、トランプ氏の反対陣営のために、元英国情報当局者とみられる人物が準備した。調査文書は、事実検証がされていないだけでなく、企業名の綴りなど事実と明らかに異なる記載もある。

BuzzFeed Newsはトランプ氏の政権移行チームにコメントを求めたが、すぐには応じなかった。トランプ氏の弁護士マイケル・コーエン氏はネットニュースMicの取材には、疑惑は事実と全く異なると否定している。

調査文書に対して、トランプ氏はTwitterで「フェイク（虚偽）ニュース。政治的な魔女狩りそのものだ！」と猛反発した。

トランプ氏の側近ケリーアン・コンウェイ氏も、米テレビ局とのインタビューで、疑惑は「何も確認が取れていない」と否定した。また、コンウェイ氏はトランプ氏がこの調査文書に関して、CNNが報じたような報告を受けた事実は「把握していない」と述べた。

調査文書は、数ヵ月前から出回っていた。米政府上層部、情報諜報員、報道関係者の間では、非常に有名だった。米国の評論雑誌「マザージョーンズ」のライター、デビッド・コーン氏は10月のコラムで、この調査文書に言及している。

7月以来初めての記者会見では、調査文書を強く批判

Lucas Jackson / Reuters

Eric Trump and his father, Donald Trump

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

As Donald Trump prepares to assume the presidency after campaigning to restore American jobs, a Virginia winery owned by his son, Eric Trump, has applied for permission to import more foreign workers to prune grapevines.

On Wednesday, the Department of Labor posted a petition from Trump Winery, also known as Trump Vineyard Estates, asking to bring in six vineyard workers under the federal H-2 visa program, which permits US employers to bring in foreign laborers on temporary work visas. Since 2003, more than 100,000 foreigners have been brought in under the program each year.

Combined with this latest request, companies owned by Trump or bearing his name have sought permission from the Department of Labor to hire at least 263 foreign guest workers since he launched his presidential campaign. Many work as servers and house cleaners at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate.

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Trump Vineyards. In the past, Trump has said it is “almost impossible” to find Americans who want such jobs. Trump has sought to bring in foreign guest workers at a number of his businesses since at least 2003.

The latest request, signed December 2, was posted just two days after a special envoy from the United Nations raised concerns about the federal guest worker program, saying it puts workers at risk of exploitation and even trafficking.

A BuzzFeed News investigation last year that found that H-2 workers were often exploited, and sometimes raped or beaten. BuzzFeed News also found that many Americans were denied jobs in favor of guest workers. Trump companies have not been accused of abusing H-2 workers.

In its application, Trump Vineyards said it planned to pay guest workers $10.72 an hour to work 40 hours a week, from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 7 a.m. to noon on Saturdays. Applicants are required to have at least three months’ experience and will get an unpaid lunch break, the application said. The job is seasonal, and projected to start in January and end in June.

The winery’s website says it is not owned directly by Trump or his organization, but rather by his son Eric. News reports say Trump gave the winery, which sits on 1,000 acres near Charlottesville, to his son Eric in 2012.

Still, in March of this year, on the night he won Republican primary victories in Michigan and Mississippi, Trump held a press conference at his Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida and publicly claimed ownership of it. Speaking before a table stacked high with wine, he said: “I own it 100 percent, no mortgage, no debt.”

Jessica Garrison / BuzzFeed News

America’s H-2 visa programs expose foreign guest workers “to the risk of exploitation,” including wage theft and arbitrary firing, according to a new report by the United Nations official in charge of investigating human trafficking.

The official raised “particular concern” about the structure of the program, which employers use to bring in over 150,000 unskilled workers a year for temporary and seasonal stints in the United States.

“Workers holding these temporary visas are tied to a specific employer who can exercise extensive control over them,” wrote Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, whose title is Special Rapporteur in Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. “Some live in deplorable housing conditions, commute long distance and enjoy low benefits. This is a serious problem in itself, but it is exacerbated by the fact that concerned workers may fear that if they report abuses, they will be deported or denied future visa applications.”

Her observations, made during a 10-day official country visit earlier this month, were contained in a report released Monday.

The report echoes a BuzzFeed News investigation last year that found that H-2 workers were often exploited, and sometimes raped or beaten. BuzzFeed News also found that many Americans were denied jobs in favor of guest workers.

President-elect Donald Trump has used the H-2 program, which is partially administered by the Department of Labor, for years. During his presidential campaign alone, companies owned by him or bearing his name sought permission from the DOL to hire at least 247 H-2 guest workers as servers, maids, janitors and gardeners at several of his resort properties and vineyards. His companies have not been accused of abusing the workers.

Since being elected, Trump has named several people to his transition team who have ties to the H-2 program, sparking concerns among worker advocates that his administration may expand the number of guest worker visas issued each year and roll back the regulations meant to protect those workers.

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to questions from BuzzFeed News about the report.

In a statement, the Department of Labor said that the “U.S. immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed” but noted that the department has “made a serious and sustained effort to strengthen [guestworker] programs in order to protect both U.S. and temporary foreign workers.” Department officials also said that some of those efforts have been “under constant attack from those seeking to undermine these protections.”

Proponents of the program, including employers and visa agents that recruit foreign workers for US companies, maintain that H-2 visas are vital for American businesses in tight labor markets. Without the labor of guest workers, they say, many additional jobs that depend on them will be lost as well. They also maintain that most employers treat their workers well.

The envoy has no actual power over U.S. regulations on visas or labor rules, but a critique from the United Nations has symbolic value.

“The United States holds itself out as a beacon of human rights in the world,” said Bruce Goldstein, President of Farmworker Justice, an organization that advocates on behalf of farmworkers. “When the United Nations raises questions about our implementation of human rights, we should take them very seriously.”

In her report, Giammarinaro — a former Italian judge and government minister who has worked on human trafficking issues for over a decade — recommended that officials make the visas “portable” from one employer to another, in order to “allow workers to change abusive employers.”

She also suggested that confidential procedures be put in place to allow workers to report abusive conditions, and called on the US to ratify several international treaties designed to protect workers, women, and children from human trafficking.

Giammarinaro’s report, which contained an overview of other types of labor trafficking in the U.S., also praised the government for its efforts to protect foreign workers and to educate them about their rights.

Andrew Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurants, exits after a meeting with president-elect Donald Trump

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Donald Trump made restoring American jobs a centerpiece of his campaign, and after his election he vowed to pursue abuses of visa programs that “undercut the American worker.”

To many labor advocates the H-2 visa program, which US businesses use to bring in more than 150,000 unskilled foreign workers a year for temporary and seasonal stints, is a prime offender. Officially, the visas are meant as a way to help companies that can not find Americans to hire, and many employers in industries such as forestry, agriculture and landscaping argue the program is indispensable. But many American workers contend that the program has cost them jobs they would have been happy to take had they been given the opportunity.

Both advocates and opponents of the H-2 visa program say they believe the President-elect may expand it.

Trump himself has used the program. During his presidential campaign alone, companies owned by him or bearing his name sought permission from the DOL to hire at least 247 H-2 guest workers as servers, maids, janitors and gardeners at several of his resort properties and vineyards.

Guest workers have been employed at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida estate

Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images

Last week, the Trump campaign announced that Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who has advocated for guest worker programs in the past, had been appointed to the transition team for the U.S. Labor Department.

Her appointment followed an episode earlier this month, first reported by the Intercept, in which Veronica Strickland-Birkenstock, a visa agent who helps companies bring in H-2 guest workers, was listed as a member of the transition team for the Labor Department, only to disappear from the list without explanation. Neither Furchott-Rott nor Strickland-Birkenstock responded to a request for comment.

Other members of the Trump team have also used the little-known program.

North Carolina state Senator Brent Jackson, named earlier this year to Trump’s agricultural advisory committee, owns a large farm near Fayetteville that has in the past used H-2 guest workers brought in through a statewide collective. Seven of those workers sued the farm over alleged mistreatment and stolen wages. Jackson did not respond to a request for comment.

And though Trump’s pick to head the Department of Labor, Andrew Puzder, does not appear to have a direct connection to the visa program, a Wyoming franchise of Hardee’s — the fast food chain that is owned by the company Puzder runs — received approval to hire H-2 workers in a decade ago, according to federal records.

The Trump transition team did not respond to questions from BuzzFeed News. But many advocates for guest workers, who have pushed the federal government to limit the size of the program and enforce stricter worker protections, are alarmed. A BuzzFeed News investigation published last year found that guest workers were often exploited, and sometimes beaten, raped and starved.

“We are worried that the administration will choose the worst of all worlds,” said Bruce Goldstein, president of Farmworker Justice, which advocates on behalf of farmworkers. Specifically, he added, he was concerned that “the administration will not support granting current undocumented immigrants a path to immigration status and citizenship” and weaken enforcement of labor protections in the guest worker program.

Supporters of the program have long lobbied the federal government and used the courts to roll back protections for guest workers. These advocates maintain that the guest worker program is vital for American businesses in tight labor markets. If they can’t turn to foreign workers to fill those seasonal positions, they say, the many additional jobs that depend on them will be lost, too,

Dan Bremer, a visa agent in Georgia whose company, AgWorks, has received approval to recruit more than 13,000 foreign workers on behalf of his clients so far this year, said the program is essential to the United States agricultural industry.

“To export our food supply I believe would be disastrous,” Bremer said. “We need to do everything we can to keep that food supply here in the United States, and that includes, if we can’t find enough U.S. workers to do it, to bring in workers from foreign countries.”

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

As Donald Trump continues to campaign on a platform of restoring American jobs, companies he owns or that bear his name continue to apply for permission to import foreign workers for positions at resorts and golf courses from New York to Florida.

On Friday, the Department of Labor posted a petition from the Trump International Beach Resort, in Sunny Isles Beach near Miami, Florida, to import temporary workers. The resort, which licenses Trump’s name but is owned by the International Resorts Management Group, asked for permission to bring in 20 waiters and waitresses, claiming no Americans wanted the jobs. The positions pay $10.36 an hour plus tips.

In addition to this latest request, companies owned by Trump or bearing his name have already sought permission from the Department of Labor to hire at least 227 foreign guest workers since he launched his presidential campaign.

Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did officials at the beach resort. In the past, Trump has said it is “almost impossible” to find Americans who want such jobs.

“You can’t get help,” Trump told MSNBC last year when asked about his use of the program.

Officials at a career services agency in South Florida, which helps place Americans in jobs in the resort industry, have not always seen the same employment picture. Tom Veenstra, a senior director at CareerSource Palm Beach County, a workforce development agency chartered by the state of Florida, has said in the past that his office has hundreds of U.S. workers in a database who would qualify for hospitality jobs. He also told BuzzFeed News last month that other Trump properties have failed to avail themselves of free recruitment efforts that might help them find qualified American workers who want the jobs.

H-2 visas allow employers to bring people from other countries into the US as “guest workers” to fill temporary positions. One of the strictest rules of the H-2 program is that American workers be given preference in hiring. Companies seeking these visas are also required by law to show that they already tried, but failed, to find Americans for the job.

Previous BuzzFeed News investigations have found that many US companies go to extraordinary lengths to avoid hiring Americans so they can bring in foreign workers on H-2 visas instead.

Trump companies appear to have followed recruitment rules when seeking guest workers, posting those positions in the state online job board and placing ads, as required, with local newspapers such as the Palm Beach Post.

ERIC THAYER / Reuters

After officials at the Palm Beach county employment office announced they would hold a series of job fairs this month to help resorts and hotels hire local workers, more than 100 employers signed on, including the Hyatt, the Hilton, and the Waldorf Astoria.

Two well known local employers, however, have so far been conspicuously absent from the push to hire local U.S. workers: the Mar-a-Lago club and the Trump National Golf Club, Jupiter, both owned by Republican Presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

Trump has centered his presidential campaign around restoring American jobs. But when it comes to many of his own operations, from New York to Virginia to Florida, Trump has instead imported foreign guest workers on temporary visas, insisting that no Americans want the work.

His companies asserted that again this summer, when Mar-a-Lago and the Jupiter golf club filed applications seeking approval to import up to 78 servers, housekeepers and cooks at the two resorts.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment this week, and nor did the Trump golf club. Mar-a-Lago officials could not be reached for comment. In the past, Trump has said it is “almost impossible” to find Americans who want such jobs, which pay between $10.17 and $12.74 per hour. “You can’t get help,” Trump told MSNBC last year, when asked about his use of the program.

But officials at CareerSource Palm Beach County, a workforce development agency chartered by the state of Florida, say Trump’s companies have failed to avail themselves of free recruitment efforts that might help them find qualified American workers who want the jobs.

For instance, on July 31, Mar-a-Lago and the Trump golf club posted lengthy classified advertisements for the jobs in the Palm Beach Post jobs section seeking U.S. workers — one of the steps required by the federal government before bringing in guest workers.

However, Mar-a-Lago and Jupiter never told the Palm Beach County employment office they had openings, even though they listed the office on the advertisements.

“Our staff found out about them by seeing the advertisements … and contacted the state about them,” said Tom Veenstra, a senior director at the agency. He added that employers who want local workers “can receive valuable recruiting, pre-screening and referral services at no cost” from his agency. “We assign a recruiter for those jobs.”

Veenstra has also told BuzzFeed News that he has “hundreds of people in our database that would qualify for a lot of those hospitality jobs.”

H-2 visas allow employers to bring people from other countries into America as “guest workers” to fill temporary positions. One of the strictest rules of the H-2 program is that American workers must always be given preference in hiring. Companies seeking these visas are required by law to show that they already tried, but failed, to find Americans for the job.

In addition to this latest request for 78 visas, in the year since Trump launched his presidential campaign, companies owned by him or bearing his name had already sought and won permission from the Department of Labor to hire at least 149 foreign guest workers.

John Moore / Getty Images

Donald Trump has made restoring American jobs a centerpiece of his campaign, a pledge he reiterated last week when he accepted the Republican nomination for president: “I’m going to bring our jobs back to Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York and Michigan and all of America,” he said.

This month, Trump is bringing jobs to Florida, as he looks to hire 78 servers, housekeepers, and cooks at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach and the nearby Trump National Golf Club, Jupiter.

But instead of making sure those jobs go to Americans, he is seeking to import foreign workers for the positions, which pay $10.17 an hour for housekeepers, $11.13 an hour for servers, and $12.74 for cooks. He filed applications this month claiming he couldn’t find enough Americans to do that work, and is seeking temporary visas to bring in 65 workers at Mar-a-Lago along with another seven waiters and six cooks at the golf club.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. A call to Mar-a-Lago was not returned, and an employee at the Jupiter golf club declined to comment. But in the past, Trump has defended his use of guest workers by saying there was no other way to fill the jobs.

“You can’t get help,” Trump told MSNBC’s Morning Joe in September. “Getting help in Palm Beach during the season is almost impossible.”

Officials at a nearby career services agency have seen it differently. Last year, Tom Veenstra, a senior director at Palm Beach’s career services center, told BuzzFeed News that he had “hundreds of people in our database that would qualify for a lot of those hospitality jobs.”

In an email Wednesday, Veenstra said his agency, which is chartered by the state of Florida, has a database of 1,327 Palm Beach County residents interested in server, cook, and chef positions. He said local hotels are currently seeking his agency’s help to fill more than 856 such jobs. Mar-a-Lago does not appear to be among those that contacted the agency directly, he said, adding that he could not immediately provide information about the Jupiter golf club.

H-2 visas allow employers to bring people from other countries into America as “guest workers” to fill temporary positions. One of the strictest rules of the H-2 program is that American workers must always be given preference in hiring. Companies seeking these visas are required by law to show that they already tried, but failed, to find Americans for the job. A BuzzFeed News investigation found that many companies go to extraordinary lengths to avoid hiring American workers so they can bring in foreign workers on H-2 visas instead.

In addition to this latest request for 78 visas, in the year since Trump launched his presidential campaign, companies owned by him or bearing his name had already sought and won permission from the Department of Labor to hire at least 149 foreign guest workers.

During his speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg raised this as a reason to question Trump's convictions, stating, "He says he wants to put Americans back to work, but he games the U.S. visa system so he can hire temporary foreign workers at low wages. "

The jobs were at resorts, golf courses, and vineyards in New York, Florida, and Virginia. The companies appear to have followed recruitment rules when seeking guest workers, posting those positions in the state online job board and placing ads, as required, with local newspapers such as the Palm Beach Post.

Inside, the men told a consular officer that they had been invited to work as janitors at the Sugar Mountain ski resort in Banner Elk, North Carolina. They had gone the previous season and were returning; all they needed were their new guest worker visas, which had already been approved, and they would be on their way north.

The Monterrey consulate is one of the world’s busiest, processing more than 400,000 visas each year, and it’s the single largest issuer of the kind the men were awaiting: H-2 visas, given to unskilled “guest workers” for temporary jobs in everything from tobacco farms to landscaping to shellfish peeling. The consulate cranks out an average of nearly 300 every single day.

But on this day, the State Department employee hesitated, then placed a call to the ski resort. It had been a warmer autumn than usual, and Sugar Mountain wasn’t yet open to the public; the consular officer was told that the resort needed snowmakers, not janitors. Stranger still was that the guest worker visa application, filed by a year-old company called Winterscapes, proposed sending nearly 250 Mexican janitors to two small ski resorts in the Blue Ridge Mountains that winter.

Something wasn’t right.

The visas were denied. And the consular official dashed off an urgent cable raising serious doubts about Winterscapes. Two months later, federal agents launched Operation Hammerlock, a criminal investigation that quickly grew, spreading over multiple states and encompassing several federal law enforcement agencies as its focus shifted to the country boy in North Carolina who helped line up the visas.

He lobbied Washington, worked the courts, and negotiated the underworld of Mexican recruiters to provide customers across the country the cheap foreign labor they wanted — and build himself a vast and lucrative empire.

That man, a former state employee by the name of Stan Eury, is widely credited as the largest importer of H-2 guest workers in American history: a legal coyote who saw in the complicated crenellations of federal immigration law a way to expand a little-known program into a giant. He lobbied Washington, worked the courts, and negotiated the underworld of Mexican recruiters in order to provide customers across the country the cheap foreign labor they wanted — and in the process build himself a vast and lucrative empire.

Living unobtrusively in Vass, North Carolina, playing drums in his church band, and providing devoted care to a disabled daughter, Eury, 63 years old, has kept a relatively low profile in the immigration debates that have roiled the country. But over more than a quarter of a century, he has been responsible for procuring hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers on H-2 visas for farmers, landscapers, seafood processors, restaurants, golf courses, concrete companies, and ski slopes. There are strong indications that some of those workers never returned home, as required by law. And at virtually every step — from recruiting the workers, to busing them north, and even to charging them for baggage — Eury’s businesses collected a fortune in fees from all concerned.

Perhaps most importantly, he became the guest worker industry’s dominant power broker, an implacable visionary who helped shape the program into what it is today. Thousands of companies directly employ H-2 workers, and giants such as Wal-Mart and the U.S. Forest Service have relied on their labor indirectly by buying from or contracting with those companies. Just this month, Congress voted to dramatically expand parts of the visa program.

But as previous BuzzFeed News stories have shown, employers frequently exploit foreign H-2 workers, stealing their wages, housing them in squalid conditions, and even endangering their lives. At the same time, many companies use the program to avoid hiring qualified Americans, who by law are are supposed to get first crack at those jobs. Officials at the U.S. Department of Labor say the H-2 program is “part of a wider immigration system that widely acknowledged to be broken.” They claim they have only limited power to fix problems and protect workers, foreign or American.

Overshadowed by the larger immigration debate, the H-2 program is virtually unknown to the general public. But one major constituency champions it: American business, which prizes the steady supply of cheap and pliant labor. The entire program, from its expansive reach to its weak regulation, has been shaped by the businesses that benefit from it. No one personifies that influence more than Stan Eury.

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Stan Eury

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He has waged and won battle after battle in the courts and in Congress to push wages down, to reduce regulation, to bat back worker protections, and to discourage and disqualify American job seekers. Most importantly, he has fought and won to maintain the flow of Mexicans — and money.

In 2014, more than 150,000 workers came into the country on H-2 visas, far more than the roughly 13,500 that came in the year before Eury first helped a North Carolina farmer look to Mexico for its staffing needs. Last year, Eury’s companies won approval for more than 20,000 visas, charging clients roughly $1,000 for each one.

Eury has built up an ample array of critics and former friends who say he has made a mockery of an already broken immigration system. In addition to his work as a labor broker, some of them claim, he also procured H-2 visas outright for people for whom no jobs were waiting, even people just looking for an easy way to get into the United States.

But Eury’s tactics have also earned him boundless loyalty from the thousands of employers who became dependent on the guest workers he was so good at getting. Even after federal investigators alleged that Eury and companies he created were defrauding clients by charging them millions of dollars in spurious fees, few, if any, customers walked away.

All that seemed to matter was that Eury, more than anyone else, could get them what they wanted: cheap, abundant, uncomplaining, desperate, pliable, dependable foreign labor.

Standing on his front porch last month in worn jeans, brown slip-ons, and a gray sweater, Eury eagerly discussed the H-2 program and his role in its growth, noting that he has spawned many imitators.

“Back in the day, there were no agents except us. And it became something much bigger,” said Eury, who talked enthusiastically for three-quarters of an hour before his wife, Susan, summoned him to end the conversation.

Before disappearing, however, Eury waved off talk of the government’s investigation. “I had a long and contentious relationship with the Department of Labor,” he said, squinting. “This is political.”

The entrance to the North Carolina Growers Association in Vass, North Carolina.

Andrew Craft for BuzzFeed News

A BIT OF “DUMB LUCK”

The business that would do more than anything to influence the shape of America’s guest worker program was born from a drug bust.

It was a Wednesday afternoon in the hot middle of July 1989, and Moore County Narcotics Detective Sergeant D.T. Monroe and his partner had rolled out to check on a tip that almost 200 marijuana plants were growing on an unsuspecting farmer's land.

The officers found the drugs and then, to their surprise, heard voices amid the rustle of the leaves. There, in a bit of “dumb luck,” Monroe said, they found Craig Stanford Eury Jr., whom everybody just called Stan, with his friend and colleague Ken White, watering their contraband crop.

Ten minutes earlier or later, Monroe would have missed them and been forced to dig up the plants himself. Instead, Monroe arrested Eury and White and forced them to help with the work. The department also seized the Subaru the two had driven to the field, Monroe said. “We used it for a long time for undercover work.”

Eury — who just weeks earlier had signed a pledge to abide by his employer’s “Policy for an Alcohol and Drug Free Workplace” — was able to escape serious legal trouble. But he lost his job as a North Carolina rural manpower representative, a kind of agrarian matchmaker who helps farmers find seasonal workers to plant, tend, and harvest their crops.

For a father of three small children, including a 7-year-old daughter severely disabled by cerebral palsy, losing a $24,000-a-year government salary might seem like a crisis. But Eury turned it into an opportunity.

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Stan Eury and his wife Susan.

Via facebook.com

A month after being fired, Eury founded what would become his biggest and best-known outfit, the North Carolina Growers Association. The group’s articles of incorporation pledged it would “operate as an agricultural trade association,” helping its members “by providing assistance in the areas of labor management, legislation, marketing and other such related activities.”

Eury would do essentially the same job he had done for the state. Except this time, the workers would come from Mexico on H-2 visas. And Eury would collect fees on every one. White soon joined him in the venture.

Their timing couldn’t have been better.

Three years earlier, Congress had passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which made it illegal to knowingly hire an “unauthorized alien,” and which set the stage for massive government raids on employers, including farmers who had long relied on undocumented workers.

He has won battle after battle to push wages down, to bat back worker protections, and to discourage and disqualify American job seekers. Most importantly, he has maintained the flow of Mexicans — and money.

To encourage legal employment, the bill also resuscitated the little-used H-2 guest worker program, which dated from a generation earlier, creating a special category just for agricultural workers, H-2A, and another for nonagricultural workers, H-2B. Critically, it also contained provisions for special associations that could apply for visas for all of their members at once.

Rather than relying on local workers who might make demands about their working conditions, or risk hiring undocumented workers in an era of immigration raids, farmers could now get government permission to bring in foreign laborers who were desperate for the work. Under the program’s rules, guest workers could stay here legally for up to 10 months, but they were tethered to the employer that sponsored their visa and could not seek any other job. When their visa expired, they had to leave the country.

The North Carolina Growers Association offered busy farmers a turnkey guest worker experience. It would serve as a joint employer, applying for all the visas its members wanted en masse, busing the workers across the border from Mexico, and then moving them from farm to farm as needed. And in addition to a membership fee, the growers association could charge for each and every visa, rolling in the cost of transportation and a nice chunk of overhead.

In 1990, the North Carolina Growers Association brought in its first batch of visa holders: 400 workers for a handful of farmers, more than double the number that all the farms in North Carolina combined had imported the previous year.

By 1999, the association was getting approval from the Labor Department to bring in 10,000 or more workers a year.

The back of the North Carolina Growers Association office in Vass, North Carolina.

Andrew Craft for BuzzFeed News

On top of his own familiarity with North Carolina’s agricultural employment regulations, Eury hired a number of former state officials who brought their own knowledge and connections to his business.

His team included Jay Hill, another rural manpower representative with agricultural ties thanks to his father, a prominent tobacco and sweet potato farmer in the state. He rounded out his inner circle with Lee Wicker, a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who had been working as a rural manpower representative, and Mike Bell, a Spanish speaker who had lived in Latin America and had also been working in the same agency.

Perhaps Eury’s most important contact was the man he didn’t hire. William “Bubba” Grant, an avid East Carolina University football fan and the brother of an actress who played a pageant official in the 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine, had been Eury’s direct subordinate when he worked for the government.

Grant took the job Eury vacated and rose quickly; by the mid-1990s he was running the whole division. Every H-2 visa application in the state crossed his desk, which made him a great person to know, particularly since the North Carolina Growers Association often requested more than 80% of all agricultural guest worker visas in North Carolina. For years, employers in North Carolina obtained approvals for more such guest worker visas than employers in any other state.

By law, jobs must go to qualified American applicants before any H-2 workers can be hired. But Frank Gore, a former Rural Manpower Representative who retired in 2009, said it seemed to him that state regulators didn’t prevent the growers association from passing over American workers in favor of cheaper, more pliable foreigners.

Grant did not respond to requests for an interview. A spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Commerce said the agency is in compliance with federal law.

Gore said he noticed that many of his colleagues did not even bother referring local workers to North Carolina Growers Association jobs, despite their obligation to do so. He said he quickly discovered one of the reasons why.

By law, jobs must go to qualified American applicants before any H-2 workers can be hired.

US Senator Richard Blumenthal(D-CT)

Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty Images

A group of Democratic senators are fighting a proposal that would greatly expand the number of foreign workers brought in on temporary visas each year. The guest worker program was the subject of two BuzzFeed News investigations, which revealed the many ways in which the program — which currently brings in about 150,000 foreign workers a year — can leave those workers exposed to a nightmare of abuse and can also deprive American workers of jobs that by law are supposed to go to them first. The new measure could expand by more than 130,000 the number of foreign workers brought into the U.S. while significantly limiting protections for both foreign and American workers alike.

Earlier this fall, legislation was introduced that could increase the number of workers who come into the U.S. every year on H-2B visas, which are granted for seasonal jobs in industries such as landscaping, forestry, and seafood processing.

That bill — co-sponsored by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland, and Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina — could also make it easier for employers to pay those workers lower wages, and it proposes a seemingly mundane bureaucratic change that could actually have big consequences: reducing the Department of Labor’s oversight of the program, shifting that power to the Department of Homeland Security instead. That’s significant because the Labor Department currently has primary responsibility for protecting both foreign and American workers from exploitation and abuse.

A similar bill was also recently introduced in the House of Representatives. In recent weeks, supporters have been jockeying to insert all or part of these proposals into big appropriations bills as a backdoor way to get them passed into law.

But this week, several Democratic senators, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, moved to thwart that legislative maneuver. In a letter also signed by Richard Blumenthal, Richard Durbin, and others, the senators warned that the proposals “would effectively rollback many basic protections for U.S. and foreign workers.”

In addition, they said, the legislation could effectively expand the H-2B program, which is for jobs in non-agricultural industries, to 200,000 guest workers a year, up from the current cap of 66,000. By taking away Labor Department oversight, the senators added, the proposals would “defund efforts to require employers to engage in additional recruitment of U.S. workers,” making it easier to deprive Americans of jobs and give them to foreigners on H-2B visas.

Separately, Sen. Jeff Sessions, a leading Republican from Alabama and chair of a Senate subcommittee on immigration, also wrote a letter objecting to the proposals. “Now is not the time to advance legislation further depressing wages and employment of U.S. workers,” he wrote.

Mikulski has been a steadfast proponent of the H-2B program for years and has backed previous proposals to expand the number of visas issued, as well as limit government oversight of recruiting and employment conditions.

The senator could not be reached for comment, but in a statement earlier this fall, she said the her state’s seafood industry depends on the H-2B program for survival.

"From harvesting crabs to shucking oysters, temporary and seasonal workers ensure Maryland’s seafood industry continues to prosper,” Sen. Mikulski said. “I have consistently fought for an approach to the H-2B program that recognizes that one size does not fit all, protects the jobs and wages of workers, and provides the certainty small businesses need to survive."

Earlier this week, Buzzfeed News published an investigation that found that many companies that bring in guest workers under the H-2B program, as well as its agricultural cousin, H-2A, go to extraordinary lengths to avoid hiring American workers in favor of foreigners.

That followed a prior BuzzFeed News report, published in July, that found that many foreign guest workers on both types of H-2 visas suffer exploitation and abuse, including being deprived of their fair pay, imprisoned, starved, beaten, or threatened with deportation if they complain.

Proponents of the program say it is difficult for employers to find Americans willing to do many of these jobs, and that the majority of employers follow the rules and treat their employees well.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) during an East Room ceremony November 24, 2015 at the White House in Washington, DC.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images

When Donald Trump was pressed earlier this year about why he chose to import hundreds of foreign workers over the past decade for jobs as waitresses and housekeepers at his exclusive Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, the presidential candidate basically said he had no choice.

“You can’t get help,” Trump told MSNBC’s Morning Joe in September, following a CBSMiami report on guest workers at his club. “Getting help in Palm Beach during the season is almost impossible.”

Tom Veenstra doesn’t see it that way. “We have a lot of people in our database that would be good candidates for a lot of those hospitality positions there,” Veenstra, a senior director for a Palm Beach career services center chartered by the state of Florida to help local workers get jobs, said. His staff met almost three months ago with Mar-a-Lago officials about “what we could do” to help them find workers, he said. “We work with an awful lot of hotels and high-end resorts.”

But so far, he said, Trump’s resort, which features landscaped gardens and an “incredible beach and pool facility,” has used his center to recruit workers for exactly one job, a banquet server. The agency referred four local workers, he said, and Mar-a-Lago hired one.

A bedrock principle of the H-2 visa program — which Trump’s Mar-a-Lago has used to bring in overseas workers — is that no American worker should ever be deprived of a job in favor of a foreign guest worker. Companies are required by law to take certain steps to show that they have tried but failed to find American workers before they can be approved for visas for foreign workers. But a BuzzFeed News investigation published this week found that many companies that bring in guest workers go to extraordinary lengths to avoid hiring American workers so they can bring in foreign workers on H-2 visas instead.

Trump’s club appears to have followed recruitment rules. When the Mar-a-Lago has openings for which it hopes to bring in foreign workers, it has first posted those positions in the state online job board and in ads with the Palm Beach Post, steps that are required by law.

But despite Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail to “Put American Workers First,” Mar-a-Lago has not — with one exception this fall — availed itself of the local career center to find U.S. workers, officials there said, instead relying on foreign workers.

An executive at the Mar-a-Lago said she could not answer questions about the club’s hiring practices, and referred calls to Trump headquarters in New York, where no one could immediately be reached. Trump campaign officials could also not be reached for comment.

In contrast to the Mar-a-Lago, Veenstra said, 123 other hotels, resorts and clubs — including chains such as Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt — had placed job orders with the local agency in 2014, resulting in 1,407 local workers being hired.

“I can only tell you,” Veenstra added, that “we have hundreds of people in our database that would qualify for a lot of those hospitality jobs.”

CBS Miami first reported that Mar-a-Lago hadn’t reached out to the local job source agency, and Reuters reported in August that Trump’s companies have relied on H-2 visas.

Since 2003, companies owned by Trump, including Mar-a-Lago, have been approved for at least 976 H-2 visas for foreign guest workers, an analysis of federal data shows. At least 374 of those were for waiters, 271 for cooks, and 275 for housekeepers — all jobs which Trump’s companies asserted they couldn’t fill with Americans. In 2015, waiters at Mar-a-Lago would make $10.99 an hour, cooks $13.01, and housekeepers $10.07, according to documents the resort filed with the government.

LINK: "All You Americans Are Fired": A BuzzFeed News Investigation

A spent cartridge lies on the ground near the scene of the shooting in San Bernardino.

Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

When Diana Perez heard the first shots on Wednesday, she thought someone was setting off fireworks for one of the annual holiday parties at the Inland Regional Center.

“The first thought was not ‘shooter,’ it was ‘fireworks,’” said the 28-year-old, who works at the center and spoke to BuzzFeed News by phone. “Then I looked out the window and there were, I think it was at least two men, who were dressed in dark vests and carrying big guns.”

Across the sprawling, three-building complex which made up the center, many of Perez's co-workers had the same reaction. Daniel Martinez, who worked on the same floor as Perez thought, at first, that it was a car backfiring, or just another one of those emergency drills that the center regularly held.

From her second-story window, Perez saw the shooters enter “Building Three" at the Inland Regional Center, a space she said was often left unlocked and used to hold conferences and events. And then, within seconds, she heard a barrage of gunfire.

A second witness, who asked to remain unnamed, also said she watched from her office window as two people wearing tight-fitting tactical gear walk casually up to the back of the conference room. When she looked up through her window again a man exiting the conference center was walking out just as the two shooters made their way to the back. She caught a glimpse of the rifle as one of them lifted it.

“That’s when they shot him, I saw him go down,” the witness said.

Local police said most of the 14 people killed and 17 injured were part of a holiday party for hundreds of county government workers held in building three, the easternmost building on the complex. Police said the room was "sprayed with bullets," and yet one eyewitness told BuzzFeed News that the shooters appeared to aim and choose their targets.

Police SWAT team units on an armored vehicle arrive outside the center.

Reuters

Police named Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27 — both killed in a shootout with authorities after a brief car chase — as two of the suspects who opened fire inside the building. The two met over an online dating site, according to San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan.

Farook was a U.S. citizen with multiple profiles set up over Islamic dating sites, Malik was a citizen of Pakistan.

In July 2014, Farook travelled to Pakistan and returned to the U.S. with Malik. The two married shortly afterwards. Authorities said Thursday that they were still investigating if the two may have travelled to other countries, or been in touch with militant groups.

Farook was at the holiday party Wednesday, but left "under circumstances that were described as angry" prior to the shooting, according to eyewitness testimony given to police.

Farok and Malik then returned to the party leaving their child, a 6-month-old baby girl, with her grandmother. The couple drove a black Ford Expedition they had rented days earlier and came armed with four, legally purchased weapons, among them were two .223-caliber assault rifles — one a DPMS model A-15, the other a Smith & Wesson M&P-15 model — and two semiautomatic handguns. They entered the center building through the eastern parking lot and opened fire on the party.

Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images

“We have no information at this point to indicate that this is terrorist-related, in the traditional sense that people may be thinking,” Burguan said. “Obviously, at a minimum, we have a domestic terrorist-type situation that occurred here.”

Police said they began investigating Farook and Malik fafter an eyewitness described Farook as behaving strangely. Police then discovered the rented SUV, which matched a description of the getaway vehicle.

More than four hours after the shooting took place, at approximately 3 p.m. PT, officers approached the home of Farook and Malik in the nearby community of Redlands and engaged the SUV in a brief chase. On a residential street, a hail of gunfire erupted, sending bystanders and unsuspecting motorists scurrying for cover.

And then, almost as quickly as the attack unfolded, Farook and Malik were dead, their bullet-ridden SUV on full view of television news helicopters overhead.

A third person seen running away from the scene of the gun battle was detained, but Burguan said it was later determined that he had nothing to do with the shooting.

Twelve pipe bombs, 2,000 9-millimeter rounds, and 2,500 .223 rounds were found at the Redlands home Farook and Malik were renting. Also found were "hundreds of tools, many of which could be used to construct IEDs or pipe bombs," Burguan said on Thursday.

The scene of the final shoot-out between police and the couple.

Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images

Eyewitnesses told BuzzFeed News that the attackers appeared well-trained on their assault rifles, and many barricaded themselves in rooms and closets and prayed that the shooters wouldn't find them.

Diana Ramos, 19, of San Bernardino told BuzzFeed News her 25-year-old sister, Esly Ramos, was a social worker with an office on the second floor of the building. At 10 a.m., Esly texted her sister "happy birthday." An hour later, she sent a second text: "There's a shooting going on outside. Don't tell mom. There's a man shooting outside the building."

Ramos told her sister that the gunshots were coming from next door.

“They put desks by the door so nobody could come in...it's scary to think that one moment your sister is texting you happy birthday and then the next moment she says there's a shooting outside."

Denise Peraza, 27, said that when the doors to the conference room opened, two men dressed in black and wearing face masks opened fire for 30 seconds.

"The guys opened fire for 30 seconds, randomly, then paused to reload and began firing again.”

“Everyone dropped to the floor,” Peraza told her relatives, who relayed the conversation to the Times. “The guys opened fire for 30 seconds, randomly, then paused to reload and began firing again.”

Peraza was hiding under a desk when she was hit with a bullet in her lower back. She called her sister from her hospital bed to say that she would be OK.

Julie Paez, an inspector with the San Bernardino County Department of Health, was shot in the upper thigh and abdomen as she mingled at the party, preparing to receive her Employee of the Year award. Her son, Nick Paez, told the L.A. Times that she sent a group text message to her family saying,"Love you guys...Was shot."

When her family found her at the hospital post-surgery, they told their mother that the shooter was Farook, one of her co-workers.

"That doesn't make sense," she replied. "They were congratulating him for having a baby."

A second co-worker told police that Farook appeared to be living “living the American dream,” and that the office recently threw him a baby shower.

Teresa Hernandez (right) hugs Monique Gutierrez at the Rudy Hernandez Community Center as they wait for a relative.

Alex Gallardo / Reuters

A former employee who was with the survivors of the shooting on Wednesday relayed how they remembered Farook leaving the party just as they were getting ready to take a group photo.

“He came in late, looked a little upset…anxious, he wasn’t happy,” the former employee told BuzzFeed News on condition that he not be named because he did not have permission to speak with the media.

Witnesses said one of the shooters had pointed the gun at some people without shooting, but appeared to be deliberately shooting others.

"We left messages, texts, everything. Haven’t heard from her. I'm petrified. I'm worried and scared."

Ramos, Ortiz, and Peraza consider themselves lucky that they knew where their family members were. On Wednesday afternoon, Sherry Esquerra waited nervously outside a community center set up to reunite families with victims, as the hours passed without word on the whereabouts of her daughter, Shawna Timmons, and her son-in-law, Daniel Timmons.

"We left messages, texts, everything. Haven’t heard from her,” Esquerra told reporters at the scene. "I'm petrified. I'm worried and scared. I just want them to find out something. I know if she could text me or call me she would, and that makes me so much more worried.”

Buses filled with dozens of survivors of the shooting were still arriving at makeshift meeting points at nightfall. With each bus's arrival, family members would rush forward and embrace their loved ones.

A crowd gathers behind police line.

Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images

“It’s been the longest day. At least my daughter sent a text, so I knew she was OK. I pray for those that are still waiting for their loved ones,” said Manuel Ortiz, whose daughter was one of the last pulled from the building as she barricaded herself and a co-worker in a closet. “I pray for the police who got my daughter and others out safely.”

According to local police, it took four minutes from the first 911 call for the first police officers to reach the scene. Chief Berguan said the suspects may have already fled the scene in a dark-colored SUV by the time police arrived.

"They came prepared to do what they did as if they were on a mission. They came in with a purpose," Berguan said, noting that the shooters were armed with long guns rather than handguns.

"They came in with the intent to do something."

Tactical teams clear the bullet-ridden SUV after the shootout.

KABC-TV

FBI officials also could not immediately rule out terrorism as investigators work to determine a motive, something that would no doubt focus attention on Farook's relationships at work.

Public records showed a man named Syed Farook worked as an environmental health specialist for San Bernardino County with an annual salary of $51,747.

Farhan Khan.

KNBC-TV

Farhan Khan, Farook's brother-in-law, said at a news conference that his family was in a state of shock and could offer no insight into a possible motive.

“I cannot express how sad I am for what happened today,” Khan said. “I have no idea why he would do that.”

Whatever the motive, the shooters were well armed. Burguan said they both carried assault rifles and semiautomatic handguns, and, gauging from their equipment and attire, it appeared there "had to be some sort of planning that went into this."

Still, he added: "We are reasonably confident that we have two shooters, and we have two dead suspects."

LINK: Here’s What We Know About The Suspects In The San Bernardino Shooting

LINK: At Least 14 Killed In San Bernardino Shooting; 2 Suspects Dead

Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

At least 14 people were killed Wednesday in a shooting spree at a social services center and subsequent standoff with police in San Bernardino, California, authorities said.

Another 21 people were injured inside the Inland Regional Center, officials said. Two suspected assailants — who opened fire while wearing "assault style" tactical gear — were later fatally shot by police after fleeing in a black SUV.

The incident set off a county-wide manhunt. "The scene is strewn throughout the city and into another city," Assistant Director of FBI David Bowditch said.

One suspect has been detained.

Police said at least three people opened fire at a "lunch type gathering for the holidays" at the Inland Regional Center on Waterman Ave.

San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said that during the party, there was "a dispute."

"Somebody did leave, but we have no idea if that was the person that came back," he said.

At least 17 people were seriously wounded. There are more people who are less seriously wounded, including one police officer.

"Is this terrorism? I am still not willing to say that for sure… it is a possibility," Bowditch said.

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Read the full BuzzFeed News investigation here, and watch the video below.

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Kevin D. Liles for BuzzFeed News (2); Middle: Katie Simpson for BuzzFeed News

Losing a job is almost never easy. But it's especially bitter to lose a job because your boss used a government program to hire foreigners instead.

That's what these three Americans say happened to them.

To help American companies fill unskilled jobs that U.S. workers don't want to do, the federal government has a special program: Foreign "guest workers" are granted temporary H-2 visas and given the right to work legally in the U.S. The program has one bedrock principle: It should never deprive any American of a job.

But a BuzzFeed News investigation found that many businesses go to extraordinary lengths to deny jobs to U.S. workers so they can hire foreigners instead. Since these jobs are unskilled, the Americans who lose out are often poor or working class. Here is how three of them felt when foreign workers got their jobs. (Their comments have been edited for readability.)

Cheryl Breland, American, said she was fired from a farm near Moultrie, Georgia

They wouldn’t let me work. It wasn’t fair. They had it set so we couldn’t make production. We were working in fields that had already been picked. I knew it was only a matter of time before they fired us. They just wanted the Mexican workers. I got nothing against Mexicans. But it’s just crazy for them to be bringing them here and say we don’t want to work. We want to work! I’d rather work than be homeless. I’ve been working since I was 7. Followed my mamma to the field. Sometimes I wanted to cry for the way they were treating the Mexicans. I don’t speak Spanish, but it looked like it hurt their feelings.

Kevin D. Liles for BuzzFeed News

Nicole Burt, American, applied for jobs at stables in Kentucky but never got a call back

I wanted to work with horses, so why not come to the horse capital of the world? I probably applied to 10 to 15 jobs that winter. The other stables just said the jobs were filled or they didn't contact me back. And I'd contact them back and they'd say there are no other positions. I've heard that saying, that the employer says that they couldn't find anybody. And I just want to smack them, because we're right here. I think it's gotten to the point where employers have begun to believe that Americans are lazy and don't want to work. Yes, there might be some lazy Americans out there, but not all of us are. I felt betrayed, kind of. I just felt like America had let Americans down.

Katie Simpson for BuzzFeed News

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The following season, according to a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, about 80 workers, many of them black, were simply told: “All you Americans are fired.”

Year after year, Hamilton Growers, which has supplied squash, cucumbers, and other produce to Wal-Mart and the Green Giant brand, hired scores of Americans, only to cast off many of them within weeks, according to the U.S. government. And time after time, the grower filled the jobs with foreign guest workers instead.

Although Hamilton Growers eventually agreed to pay half a million dollars to settle the suit, company officials said the allegations are baseless. Mass firings never happened, they said, nor did anyone use racially inflammatory language. But workers tell a different story.

“We want to go to work and work all day,” said Derrick Green, 32, a father of six who said he was fired by Hamilton Growers in 2012 after only three weeks picking squash. “But they don’t want that.”

Last year, thousands of American companies won permission to bring a total of more than 150,000 people into the country as legal guest workers for unskilled jobs, under a federal program that grants them temporary work permits known as H-2 visas. Officially, the guest workers were invited here to fill positions no Americans want: The program is not supposed to deprive any American of a job, and before a company wins approval for a single H-2 visa, it must attest that it has already made every effort to hire domestically. Many companies abide by the law and make good-faith efforts to employ Americans.

Yet a BuzzFeed News investigation, based on Labor Department records, court filings, more than 100 interviews, inspector general reports, and analyses of state and federal data, has found that many businesses go to extraordinary lengths to skirt the law, deliberately denying jobs to American workers so they can hire foreign workers on H-2 visas instead.

A previous BuzzFeed News report found that many of those foreign workers suffer a nightmare of abuse, deprived of their fair pay, imprisoned, starved, beaten, sexually assaulted, or threatened with deportation if they dare complain.

At the same time, companies across the country in a variety of industries have made it all but impossible for U.S. workers to learn about job openings that they are supposed to be given first crack at. When workers do find out, they are discouraged from applying. And if, against all odds, Americans actually get hired, they often are treated worse and paid less than foreign workers doing the same job, in order to drive the Americans to quit. Sometimes, as the government alleged happened at Hamilton Growers, employers comply with regulations by hiring Americans only to fire them en masse and hand over the work to foreign workers with H-2 visas.

What’s more, companies often do this with the complicity of government officials, records show. State and federal authorities have allowed companies to violate the spirit — and often the letter — of the law with bogus recruitment efforts that are clearly designed to keep Americans off the payroll. And when regulators are alerted to potential problems, the response is often ineffectual.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Labor, which is charged with protecting workers and vetting employers seeking visas, said in a statement: “We acknowledge that the laws that authorize these programs are inadequate.” But the department also said that despite limited resources, it “actively pursues measures to strengthen protections for foreign and U.S. workers.”

The H-2 visa was created to address shortages in the American workforce. Although labor is indeed tight in some areas — such as North Dakota, where an oil boom has driven unemployment below 3% — there is little evidence of labor shortages in many industries that use the visas. In some cases, there is even a glut of available workers.

Landscaping companies, for example, were approved for more than 30,000 H-2 visas in the 2014 fiscal year. Yet Daniel Costa, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute, which receives some funding from unions, found that over the same period, unemployment in landscaping was more than twice as high as the national average.

“The problem with the system is that the H-2 workers who are coming in are not tied to actual, demonstrated labor shortages,” Costa said.

Companies that have difficulty finding American workers could attract more applicants by offering higher wages. But instead of encouraging or even subsidizing that, the government’s H-2 program effectively subsidizes the opposite effort — helping companies find pliant foreign labor, often at the expense of American workers.

Derek Davis outside his home near Moultrie, Georgia.

Kevin D. Liles for BuzzFeed News

In the last five years, the number of H-2 visas issued by the State Department, which administers the program along with the Department of Homeland Security and the Labor Department, has surged by more than 50%.

Bills in Congress to expand the guest worker program have won support from both Democrats and Republicans in recent years. Business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce have lobbied for as many as 400,000 additional H-2 visas per year. But the issue has been overshadowed by larger debates over the legal status of millions of undocumented immigrants.

Around the country, lawyers and labor brokers actively promote the H-2 program as a way to boost profit margins. Usafarmlabor, a labor broker serving the agricultural industry, until this month bluntly stated on its site: "Our workers actually save you money each month in a comparison with U.S. workers.”

Employers who use the H-2 program note that it entails numerous added costs, including visa fees and transportation, as well as compliance with complex rules. It requires that most workers be paid above minimum wage, sometimes substantially so.

But the guest worker program also offers numerous financial incentives. Agricultural employers are exempt from payroll and unemployment taxes on H-2 workers, for example; nonagricultural employers do not have to provide housing, but if they do they are allowed to charge their workers rent, which is sometimes extortionate.

Foreign laborers usually live at the job site, available to work at any time. They typically come alone, without families or other distractions that could cause them to miss work. The terms of their visas prohibit them from taking other jobs, so they have almost no leverage when it comes to wages or working conditions. And since they often come from abject poverty in their home countries, many visa holders put up with difficult or even backbreaking conditions without complaint to ensure they are invited to return the next year.

The visa program can be even more advantageous to the many employers that exploit their guest workers, making them work long hours without overtime pay, charging them illegal fees, or flat-out cheating them of their wages — all of which are against the law, regardless of whether workers are American or foreign.

A cotton field near Moultrie, Georgia.

Kevin D. Liles for BuzzFeed News

Hamilton Growers has been cited, repeatedly, for its treatment of its mostly Mexican workforce. Even as the farm was accused of casting off American workers, government investigators found that it failed to pay foreign employees all they were owed and that it housed them in often deplorable conditions. Hamilton Growers vigorously denies that it mistreated workers.

Americans are far less isolated than foreigners on H-2 visas, many of whom cannot speak a word of English. U.S. workers often know at least some of their rights and how to complain about abuses. They frequently have family nearby whom they can turn to for support. And, perhaps most importantly, they can’t be threatened with deportation. But the guest worker program can still have a devastating impact on their jobs, their families, and their entire communities.

In house after house in Moultrie, American workers said they have been shut out of agriculture jobs that have been available in their community for generations. Older workers talked of becoming impoverished; younger ones said their chances of financial stability have been strangled, leaving them, in some cases, with little choice but to leave town.

“They got rid of us,” said Mary Jo Fuller, referring to black workers. A field-worker on and off for most of her life, she said she was abruptly terminated from J&R Baker Farms, near Moultrie, as part of a mass firing in 2010. Unable to find other employment, the 59-year-old said she wound up homeless for more than a year. “We don’t really have jobs no more.”

Moultrie is “nowhere, really, for a young person trying to make it,” added Green. “It just makes you angry, very angry,” he said. “We right here in America, and you don’t want us to work. You’d rather get foreigners.”

For several years, Abrorkhodja Askarkhodjaev ran a temp firm based in Kansas City that relied on H-2 guest workers from the Philippines, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic and that serviced large hotels and other businesses around the country.

“Foreign people will clean two rooms in one hour. The American will not even finish in one hour one room,” he said speaking from the federal prison where he is serving a 12-year term for crimes related to visa fraud.

“Foreigners are better,” Askarkhodjaev added. “Of course I tried not to hire Americans.”

Before a company can bring in any guest workers, it must clear a series of legal hurdles to prove to the government that it has tried but failed to recruit Americans for the job.

Companies that don’t actually want Americans, however, have devised a whole set of creative tricks to get around these hurdles.

To apply for the right to import foreign workers, a company must first post at least two newspaper job ads, including one on a Sunday, “in the area of intended employment.”

Some employers have a very broad definition of “area of intended employment.”

In January 2011, Talbott’s Honey, a small honey producer, placed ads as required soliciting workers for jobs in Kimball, South Dakota. The ads, however, ran in Elkader, Iowa; Dalhart, Texas; and Hobbs, New Mexico — towns that are hundreds of miles from Kimball.

Talbott’s then told the government there were no available American workers and got permission to import 12 foreign workers instead.

Reached by phone, the company declined to comment on the matter. But when asked why it hadn’t run an ad somewhere in the actual vicinity of the job, Talbott’s wrote that it had tried but the ad “somehow fell thru the cracks,” according to Labor Department records.

Sometimes the government actually abets this tactic. In North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, seasonal jobs cutting down Christmas trees in the frenzied weeks before the holiday pay well. But year after year, the state’s online job board has incorrectly posted those jobs in the wrong counties, sometimes hundreds of miles from any pine forests. As a result, workers looking for Christmas tree work close to home face a peculiar paradox: The only way to find the openings nearby is to search in a faraway corner of the state.

Lawyers at Legal Aid of North Carolina have been complaining to the state Department of Commerce about the Christmas tree job posting discrepancies for years. Yet despite repeated promises by state regulators to fix it, the issue persists, the lawyers said.

Indeed, officials in the state at times seem to make it easy for employers to avoid hiring Americans. During the fiscal year that ended this July, the state’s job bank tallied work orders seeking H-2 workers for 17,496 agricultural job openings, according to the North Carolina Department of Commerce. More than 7,000 U.S. farmworkers had registered with the agency actively seeking work — yet only 505 of them were referred to those jobs.

Kim Genardo, spokesperson for the department, wrote in an email that the state’s “Foreign Labor Certification program is absolutely in compliance with federal law.”

Across the country, employers have run ads that failed to list any contact information, omitted the name of the company, or excluded relevant information such as what kind of job it was, where it was located, or how much it would pay, records show.

Some simply don’t place ads at all.

For years, Linda White ran a business in Livingston, Louisiana, securing H-2 visas for hundreds of employers. Late last month, she was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for creating phony receipts in an attempt to convince regulators she had placed newspaper ads for dozens of clients, when in fact she had not. During a three-year period reviewed by the Labor Department, her clients were approved for more than 8,000 visas, federal data shows.

In an interview, White called the matter “a mistake,” adding that “nobody was going to call for these jobs over dumb newspaper ads anyhow. When clients come to me, what they want is their Mexicans.”

Guest workers peeling crawfish in Louisiana.

Jessica Garrison/BuzzFeed News

A member of Congress said he is preparing to introduce legislation to increase oversight and accountability of the controversial H-2 guest worker visa program.

The announcement by Arizona Democrat Raul Grijalva comes less than two weeks after a BuzzFeed News investigation revealed widespread exploitation and abuse of guest workers who enter the U.S. legally on H-2 visas. The report documented thousands of cases of workers not being paid the proper wage, as well as incidents involving workers who were threatened, beaten, sexually assaulted, starved or imprisoned. Some workers have even died on the job. And yet, the investigation found, employers rarely face significant consequences.

Grijalva, a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus whose father came to the U.S. from Mexico as a migrant laborer, called some of the abuses "beyond the pale." In an interview, he said that he is still working out details of the proposed legislation, but it would likely include clear rules for treatment of H-2 guest workers employed by companies such as forestry contractors that receive federal contracts. He said he was also considering proposals to enhance the enforcement authority of the Department of Labor, which oversees the program.

Rep. Raul Grijalva

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

In March, the Government Accountability Office issued a report calling for stronger worker protections in the guest worker program, noting that the Labor Department failed to conclude more than half its investigations of H-2 employers within the two-year statute of limitations. BuzzFeed News also found that many companies that were caught repeatedly abusing or exploiting workers were nevertheless granted more visas and lucrative federal contracts.

Yet backed by active industry lobbying, the decades-old H-2 program continues to grow, providing foreign workers to a huge variety of industries, including farming, landscaping, seafood processing, forestry and traveling carnivals. More than 150,000 H-2 visas were issued in the 2014 fiscal year — a 50% increase over just five years.

Workers from countries including Mexico, Guatemala, the Philippines and Jamaica see the program as a way to earn more money than they could at home on a temporary basis, but because the program binds them to a single employer with no chance to change jobs, they are often subject to mistreatment. Many workers are obligated to pay illegal bribes to enter the program, and run up crippling debts that further limit their options.

The Labor Department last month acknowledged that the H-2 program is "part of a wider immigration system that is widely acknowledged to be broken" and allows for worker exploitation. It blamed a lack of enforcement in part on limited resources, noting it only has 1,000 investigators to protect all 135 million workers in the U.S., but said its agents found violations in 82% of the H-2 visa employers it investigated in fiscal year 2014.

Other members of Congress, including Texas Democrat Joaquin Castro have vowed to take action as well. Castro called the BuzzFeed report "very troubling," adding that "there needs to be a better system of accountability for employers who abuse the law and mistreat their workers."

He said the issue "further highlights the need for comprehensive immigration reform." Staffers said Castro, a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, intends to bring the issue up with the White House when Congress is back in session next month.

Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on immigration, addressed concerns about enforcement of H-2 worker protection laws, saying in a statement that she supports "allocating sufficient resources to the Department of Labor to fully and thoroughly investigate allegations of abuse in the program."

The government has been warned repeatedly over the past two decades of serious systemic problems in the design and implementation of the H-2 program, and the Labor Department's own inspector general has called for massive overhaul if not complete abandonment of the program.

Advocates from the industries that employ workers on H-2 visas, along with the Chamber of Commerce, have pushed to expand the guest worker program. In addition, guest worker programs have been a central element in proposals for immigration reform.

Buzzfeed News Reporter Adrian Carrasquillo contributed to this report

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A los 26 años de edad, Marisela Valdez dejó sus hijos de 8 y 5 años con su madre en Sinaloa, México, y se subió a un minibus para viajar a los Estados Unidos por primera vez.

Ken Bensinger y Jessica Garrison / Via BuzzFeed News

Se fue llena de esperanzas de poder ganar dinero para terminar su educación, y se sentía contenta porque lo hacía con una visa que le permitía cruzar la frontera para trabajar legalmente en una planta procesadora de mariscos llamada L.T. West ubicado en Mamou, un pueblo remoto de Louisiana.

Valdez tenía miedo porque todo era nuevo y extraño, y, según ella, la vivienda proporcionada por el patrón estaba en mal estado, sucia y llena de insectos y ratones. Sin embargo, ella tenía esperanza. "Quería trabajar y quería ahorrar dinero y hacerlo de una manera legal para no tener que cruzar la frontera indocumentada," dijo Valdez.

Ken Bensinger y Jessica Garrison / Via BuzzFeed News

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