http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-model-felt-slave-working-donalds-agency/story?id=37313993Trump Model: Felt Like 'Slave' Working for Donald's AgencyBy MATTHEW MOSK BRIAN ROSS RANDY KREIDER Mar 10, 2016, 6:59 AM ET
A Jamaican-born fashion model is taking on Donald Trump, saying the modeling agency owned by the presidential candidate lured her to New York to work at age 17 with the promise of riches and fame and then treated her “like a slave.”
The model, Alexia Palmer, said in a lawsuit against the agency that she received only $3,880 plus cash advances totaling $1,100 over a three year period, even though Trump Model Management filed immigration documents to obtain a special work visa, called an H-1B, for Palmer, certifying she would work “full-time” and earn $75,000 a year.
“That’s what slavery people do,” Palmer told ABC News. “You work and don’t get no money.” The agency took 80 percent of her earnings as expenses and fees but only found her 21 shoots over three years. And under the terms of her visa, she could not work anywhere else if she wanted to stay in the U.S.
Trump's attorney, Alan Garten, disputed Palmer’s claim, saying she was treated the same as any other fashion industry prospect and made little money because “she had a lack of work."
“Anything she's saying about being treated as a slave is completely untrue,” Garten said. “The greater demand for the model, the better that model does. In the case of the individual you're talking about, there wasn't -- unfortunately -- a lot of demand for the model.”
Immigration experts told ABC News that this type of arrangement -- bringing in a worker on a promise of pay that never comes -- is a troubling abuse of the foreign work program.
“I'd say that somebody's got some explaining to do,” said Robert Divine, a former chief counsel to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services agency during the Bush administration. “It would be extraordinarily unusual for that to be legal.”
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