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It's actually a work/travel visa. These foreigners are actually wealthy college students in their home countries. Their parents pay big money for them to come here. They get college credits for it. It's their year abroad. (I actually feel sorry for them that their year abroad involves living in substandard employee housing and being treated like a slave, but most of them enjoy it because it's their first taste of freedom and independence as young adults.) It's a shame local Vermonters don't realize these aren't uneducated, impoverished Mexicans. The Vermont economy benefits because these kids have their parents credit cards and almost unlimited spending limits by our standards. The resorts actually make money by having them. Do local Vermonters pay a resort thousands of dollars to have a temporary job? No.
As already pointed out this is just not the case,not in your wildest dreams.I've met two from Peru and to say that they had all the money they needed...just not so.
Someone must remember a resort ( Killington I think) charging them a lot for room and board so they ended up with no money and there was a lawsuit over it.
Yes. ski resorts hire foreign workers, usually during the winter months, to fill positions that can't be filled within the local labor market. Few locals are jumping at the chance to make $8.50-$10 an hour and many have figured out they can do better relying on the state's generous social welfare programs.
Here in Stowe most of the laborers are college kids from central and south america who come here during their school breaks (it's summer there when it's winter here). My understanding is that they are generally paid minimum wage and most come through agencies that broker foreign workers.
I'm not sure if they come for the experience or for the money, but they have a reputation for being good workers.
From what I've heard, the number of visas issued are limited and many resort owners have pushed for a revamped foreign worker program that would make it easier for them to hire seasonal employees.
Would only like to add that when my highly-qualified database-admin. husband was looking for work in the US with a green card, employers were only interested in the more-precarious H1-B visa imports whom they could pay less and mistreat more and threaten to send home if they squawked. This is just capitalism: to extract the maximum possible; to hire as little labor as possible at the cheapest price and under the most convenient terms. No capitalist is a "job creator": that isn't actually "their job". It's best we face this reality squarely rather than delude ourselves about it. Their job is pure extraction and nothing but.
Is it desireable that Hopes spend a lot of money in a swank resort hotel in the "hopes" (delusion) that to a great extent this "trickles down" to the average Vermonter? According to some it is. I would say not. Arctichomesteader rightly points out that tourism displaces other, more necessary and organic, activities and degrades essential resources.
Would only like to add that when my highly-qualified database-admin. husband was looking for work in the US with a green card, employers were only interested in the more-precarious H1-B visa imports whom they could pay less and mistreat more and threaten to send home if they squawked. This is just capitalism: to extract the maximum possible; to hire as little labor as possible at the cheapest price and under the most convenient terms. No capitalist is a "job creator": that isn't actually "their job". It's best we face this reality squarely rather than delude ourselves about it. Their job is pure extraction and nothing but.
It must not be better in your husband's country of origin or he wouldn't be trying to work here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ladelfina
Is it desireable that Hopes spend a lot of money in a swank resort hotel in the "hopes" (delusion) that to a great extent this "trickles down" to the average Vermonter? According to some it is. I would say not.
All of the hotels, restaurants, and stores I go to are small, locally owned businesses. I make a point to buy local even when traveling.
Would only like to add that when my highly-qualified database-admin. husband was looking for work in the US with a green card, employers were only interested in the more-precarious H1-B visa imports whom they could pay less and mistreat more and threaten to send home if they squawked. This is just capitalism: to extract the maximum possible; to hire as little labor as possible at the cheapest price and under the most convenient terms. No capitalist is a "job creator": that isn't actually "their job". It's best we face this reality squarely rather than delude ourselves about it. Their job is pure extraction and nothing but.
Is it desireable that Hopes spend a lot of money in a swank resort hotel in the "hopes" (delusion) that to a great extent this "trickles down" to the average Vermonter? According to some it is. I would say not. Arctichomesteader rightly points out that tourism displaces other, more necessary and organic, activities and degrades essential resources.
Tourism is so important to the state the UVM has an entire department dedicated to studying its effects. From a 2009 UVM report:
Quick Facts
Visitors made an estimated 13.7 million trips* to Vermont for leisure, business or personal travel.
Direct spending by visitors for goods and services totaled $1.424 billion.
Visitor spending supports an estimated 33,530 jobs for Vermonters (approximately 11.5% of all VT jobs).*
Sectors of the Vermont tourism economy, like retail and dining, are 1-2 times more dependent on visitor spending than the national average.
What "necessary and organic activity" could replace it and generate the same revenue for the state? And, if tourism disappears what do you think our property tax bills would look like.
I believe most Americans are pro-capitalism but the problem is, the economic system we have in America today is no longer capitalism -- it's plutocracy.
I believe most Americans are pro-capitalism but the problem is, the economic system we have in America today is no longer capitalism -- it's plutocracy.
I'm sure many a person can make a case that it was always a plutocracy.....
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I'd miss the Carter years,but I really do.
I fear for the future,I'm glad I'm not a twenty something young person.
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