The nation’s ski industry is mobilizing in a unified and sweeping effort to thwart potential cuts to a cultural visa program that allows young foreign students to work temporarily in the U.S.
Ski resorts have become reliant on J-1 Summer Work Travel visa workers in the past five years, weaning from the heavily regulated H-2B visa program that once stocked resorts with young workers from the Southern Hemisphere. Recent reports that the White House is considering slashing or even eliminating the J-1 visa program as part of President Donald Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” executive order, could have sweeping impacts on the American resort industry.
“It would be worse than the drought,” said Andy Wirth, whose Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadow ski areas in California endured three consecutive seasons of meager snow in a crippling drought. “We cannot, as an industry, have Trump sign that two months before we open.”
Wirth said the same thing in an Los Angeles Times article in late August, but the last few weeks have galvanized the resort industry in an all-hands-on-deck campaign to thwart Trump’s anticipated cuts to the J-1 program. The fight has grown urgent as the snow begins to fall and unemployment rates across the West reach historic lows.
“Andy is absolutely right. I’ve had human resources directors from resorts across the country calling me in a panic saying, ‘If I don’t have access to J-1 workers, I’m quitting this job,” said Dave Byrd, the director of regulatory affairs for the 313-resort National Ski Areas Association who has been in Washington, D.C., for two months lobbying a growing roster of lawmakers to fight the plan.
Earlier this month, Byrd and the NSAA joined an effort to force an amendment into the U.S. Senate’s proposed State & Foreign Operations budget that would prevent Trump from using an executive order to cut or eliminate the J-1 visa program.
The amendment marked progress in the resort industry’s battle to protect visa programs that bolster rural resort operator staffs. In July, the ski resort industry hailed federal approval of a one-time 15,000-visa bump in annual H-2B visas. As unemployment rates plummeted, ski resorts had joined golf course operators, fisheries and landscape companies in lobbying the federal government to bolster that program. But the win was short-lived. Resorts have turned away from the once essential H-2B visa program because of onerous regulations — such as proving no American workers wanted the job, guaranteeing at least 35 hours a week and paying travel expenses for foreign workers.
But the J-1 visa program took up the slack. Especially for ski resorts where the three- to four-month busy season aligns perfectly with the summer break of college students in the Southern Hemisphere. The ski season does not align with American student breaks, so J-1 visa students from Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Argentina account for about 8,000 of the ski industry’s roughly 130,000 seasonal workers.
“All ski resorts hire Americans first and only augment staffing requirements with J-1 visas — this program does not take a single job from Americans. To recruit and employ J-1s actually costs ski areas more due to the recruiting and visa-processing costs,” said David Perry, the longtime Aspen Skiing Co. executive who recently took the reins of the new Denver-based, yet unnamed — resort company that corralled more than a dozen of North America’s top ski areas. “If the program changes, it will hurt rural economies where ski resorts are often the biggest economic engine by forcing resorts to host fewer guests and curtail operations.”
The resort industry is one of the West’s top rural economic drivers. And unemployment in those rural locales is staggeringly low. In Colorado’s ski-area counties, unemployment rates are some of the lowest in the state, at 2.1 percent in Winter Park’s Grand County, 1.9 percent in Vail’s Eagle County and 1.8 percent in Aspen’s Pitkin County. The 1.3 percent unemployment rate in the four-resort Summit County is the lowest of any resort-anchored county in the country. Colorado’s unemployment rate of 2.4 percent is the lowest among 11 states that host 217 ski areas.
It’s not just the big resorts that could suffer if the J-1 visa program is cut. Resorts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina rely on the cultural exchange visas, Byrd said. And it’s not just ski areas. Small businesses outside tourism could be impacted if there are cuts to the cultural exchange program. The Alliance for International Exchange shows summer-work travel exchange J-1 visa participants contributed $509 million to the U.S. economy in 2016, including 4,675 J-1 workers in Colorado contributing $24.8 million.
“They call it ‘Hire American, Buy American,’ but it could end up being a ‘Fire American’ policy,” said Ilir Zherka, the executive director of the Alliance for International Exchange. “Businesses that rely on international workers for supplemental employees would have to shut down. This could be devastating to many local economies around the country.”
The privately funded cultural exchange visa program was born in 1961 as the U.S. sought to foster better diplomacy by hosting temporary foreign workers — usually students — who would return home with American friends, a deeper understanding of democracy and a greater appreciation of the United States.
“We can’t lose that people-to-people diplomacy and at the same time hurt local economies,” Zherka said. “Even if we prevent this J-1 visa program from getting cut, we need to prepare for three years of challenges from this administration surrounding immigration issues.”
Byrd said he expects Trump may act on the J-1 visa program next week.
“We really hope he doesn’t,” Byrd said. “We may have to sue him to stop him if he comes out and tries to eliminate the J-1 program.”
