WASHINGTON — One of President Donald Trump’s priorities, low unemployment, is complicating another: curbing immigration.

With the number of jobs available exceeding the number of Americans seeking jobs, employers are looking beyond the border to fill openings, and migrants are coming to the country in search of work.

Hotel and restaurant owner Todd Callewaert is short more than two dozen workers this season for his Mackinac Island, Michigan, businesses. “You can’t hire a line cook right now, it’s impossible, even for 20 bucks an hour,” he said. “We usually fill the gap with visa workers, but we can’t even get those this year.”

The Labor Department said Friday the unemployment rate was 3.9 percent, near the 18-year low set in May, and employers are adding jobs at a faster pace than last year.

Trump has made clear employers should be trying to attract American workers through wage increases and other incentives, not filling jobs with immigrants.

“Curbing immigration is essential to growing wages and ensuring available jobs go to American workers, not foreign workers,” Deputy White House Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told AP. “As immigration curbs are put into place, more and more Americans will be absorbed back into the workforce, especially those who have been left out due to poor work history or difficult life circumstances.”

The administration has made it harder to come to the U.S. for work, legally or otherwise. Work visas are costly, complicated and limited. Large-scale, job-seeking migration through a porous border is long gone.

This summer, the administration tried to deter would-be immigrants by adopting a “zero-tolerance” policy, prosecuting anyone caught crossing the border illegally. It resulted in nearly 3,000 children separated from their parents at the border, prompting international outrage.

Trump eventually stopped the separations and the government was forced by a judge to reunify families.

Still, tens of thousands of people cross the border illegally every month, many seeking asylum from violence. But often, they’re coming because of the prospect of work.