Copper Mountain – Colorado ski resorts that have exhausted their quotas for hiring foreign temporary workers are resurrecting a 1960s tradition: enlisting college students to meet low-wage labor needs.
But these days, the students come from South America.
Ski towns now employ hundreds of foreign students – from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru and elsewhere – under a U.S. government cultural-exchange program that allows them to work while experiencing life in America.
Critics complain that this growing reliance on foreign students strains the spirit of cultural exchange and hurts U.S. workers. Congressional investigators also recently found that the government is failing to oversee the program as required.
Across the Colorado mountains, South American students now tune skis, greet guests, run cash registers, flip burgers, wait tables and more – generally for around $8 an hour, but sometimes for as little as $2.50 an hour, plus tips.
They often juggle two jobs to afford housing. Some learned the hard way this year that the life of a resort worker entails scrambling for bed space and gobbling too much fast food.
Even so, “it’s been a good deal for me,” said Brazilian Leo Cavalcante, 21, herding minivans through a snowpacked parking lot here. He’s motivated more to hone his English and have an adventure than to earn money, he said.
The government’s program for bringing in students “was developed as an exchange program to expose foreign nationals to the United States. It was not intended to take over jobs,” said Sally Lawrence, administrator at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs.
The rules let students on summer vacation – which in the Southern Hemisphere coincides with winter here – work for up to four months, Lawrence said. “A lot of people in the United States don’t want these jobs. As I understand, there’s a (labor) shortage.”
Not fair, contends Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., which favors stricter limits on hiring abroad to fill U.S. jobs.
“A cultural visa is turning into a work visa,” Krikorian said.
Hiring U.S. college students instead of foreign students “might make a lift ticket cost more,” he said. “But is importing foreign labor to keep ticket costs low a proper function of government?”
A Government Accountability Office investigation concluded in October that State Department overseers must do more to guard against abuses, such as students overstaying visas and exploitation of students. A State Department “compliance unit” was not fully funded, the GAO report said.
Each year before ski season, Colorado resort operators dip into an alphabet soup of government visa programs to build their workforce. First, they line up as many as 14,000 “H2B” foreign temporary workers. Then they hire hundreds of South American students under the J-1 “summer work travel” program.
The State Department issued 106,000 J-1 visas to admit foreign students under the work-travel program in 2005, up from 71,218 in 2001.
Unlike the 66,000 H2B visas the government gives – a congressionally set national quota exhausted for this year by mid-December – J-1 visas let students roam and switch jobs, and there’s no cap.
Some 52 private companies, designated by the State Department, recruit foreign students through agents abroad. The students and their families pay up to $2,500 for visas, airfare and other fees. The sponsoring companies then must supervise students and report their whereabouts to the Department of Homeland Security.
If evidence arises that a sponsor isn’t fulfilling its responsibilities, the company would get a telephone call to “find out what’s going on,” Lawrence said.
In Colorado, Copper Mountain this year hired about 200 South American students, said Sarah Wing, the resort’s human resources manager. Copper’s parent, Vancouver, British Columbia-based Intrawest Corp., also relies on foreign students at its Winter Park and Mary Jane ski areas.
Vail Resorts Inc., which owns Breckenridge, Beaver Creek, Keystone and Vail, employs “a few hundred,” said Nicole Greener, international staffing manager.
Without foreign workers, Greener said, Vail Resorts would have to rethink its labor strategy. The downside of hiring students is that they can only work for four months. “They don’t get you through the whole season,” she said.
Colorado ski resorts’ “increasing reliance on foreign workers suggests that they can’t hire Americans at the wage that they’re paying,” U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., leader of the House immigration reform caucus, said in a written statement.
“The J-1 program is being used not to expand a foreign student’s understanding of the United States, but to undercut American workers,” Tancredo said.
Beyond that, “our myriad visa categories actually encourage abuse.”
Tancredo favors a single worker visa system.
This winter, South American exchange students in Summit County discovered what U.S. workers long have lamented: Although the resorts are eager to hire, housing is scarce and often unaffordable.
Dozens of Brazilians were left crunching through dark, icy streets on a night in December, with temperatures below 10 degrees, searching for vacant motel rooms. Some clashed with managers over occupancy limits. A window was broken. Tempers flared.
Some huddled daily at the Frisco Information Center between work shifts for warmth and free access to e-mail. Copper Mountain managers, whose 500-unit worker dormitory was full, directed students to Leadville, 25 miles away over 11,300-foot Fremont Pass, to find rooms.
Cramming into various motels for a month became “a huge problem for me,” said Gabriella Rocha, 19, a Brazilian working two jobs in Breckenridge.
“It’s not the way I wanted it to be. I don’t want to be vulnerable. I want to know how much I’m going to pay each month, and where I’m going to stay.”
Local mothers got involved, opening church doors and taking students into their homes.
“Somebody needs to be overseeing this closely,” said Jill Clement, director of the Frisco Information Center, who adopted two Brazilians and a New Zealander. “We don’t want to see this happen again.”
Foreign students were told in advance about job and housing opportunities, and many chose to make arrangements on their own, said Janice Haigh, vice president of Camp Counselors USA, a California-based sponsor company that recruited 6,000 students on J-1 visas – including many working in Colorado.
Most have reported an address as required, Haigh said, though there’s nobody on-site in Colorado to verify their whereabouts. “We’re assuming we have an honest bunch of participants,” she said.
After an initial scramble, exchange students this month were settling in and, after 12-hour workdays, partying. Many flock to the Salt Creek disco at Breckenridge, where bouncers now check passports instead of driver licenses.
On the job, South Americans bring “a work ethic you don’t find in twentysomething Americans. They’re polite, friendly. They’re always here,” said Les lie Holmes, assistant manager in Spencer’s restaurant at the Beaver Run Hotel. “And the younger workforce revitalizes the nightlife of the town – absolutely.”
Foreign students say that in spite of hardships, they’re also glimpsing modern U.S. values.
“I’m working three jobs. I’m sharing a house with 12 guys,” said Bruno Cunha, 24, of Brazil, behind the counter at Frisco’s Loaf-N-Jug around midnight.
Now he and his girlfriend want to leave, he said. Soon they’ll have enough money. They plan on savoring some free days drifting around Europe.
