The Outer Banks seasonal workers are the illustration John Kiriakou offered in November 2025, during a discussion of the Trump Organization’s applications for hundreds of H-2A and H-2B visas for Mar-a-Lago, its golf clubs and its Virginia estates.[1]
The context
Rall set out the numbers: 184 visa requests for farm hands, housekeepers and servers, up from 121 in 2021, for a running total of 566 — with the president telling Fox that he cannot find anyone good to work.[1][2]
Kiriakou’s first answer was that the practice is not new and was an issue in the 2016 campaign: every year the Trump Organization brings these people in rather than hiring Americans, looking for cheaper foreign workers.[3]
What he saw himself
His own evidence is domestic and first-hand. When he was married the family used to go to the Outer Banks of North Carolina every summer — clean, green, beautiful, and a place they loved.[3]
“We never encountered an American lifeguard.” Nor, almost, any American store clerks, shop clerks, waiters or waitresses. They were all from Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova — all over Eastern Europe.[3][4]
The reason he gives is the terms of the work: they work on the cheap, the conditions are poor, and — as on a ship — the hours are ridiculous. They live in group houses, eight or ten or twelve people to a house, are paid the minimum wage, and are sent back at the end of the season. Rall’s word for the arrangement, which Kiriakou did not soften, was disposable.[4][5]
His position
Kiriakou’s own view is stated without qualification: “I’m so against this. I mean, as long as there’s one underemployed or unemployed American, this should just not be permitted.”[5]
He is also explicit that this is a long-standing position rather than a reaction to the current administration. Asked to respond to a viewer arguing that opposition to unlimited labour importation ought to be a left-wing position too, he agreed and added the disclosure: “I’m on the record for favoring a border wall back in the 1990s.”[6][7]