DENVER – Milagros Sotelo went ahead to travel from South America to Tennessee to start a task at the Ober Gatlinburg ski hotel this winter. The 22-year-old has worked the last two ski seasons in the appliance rental shop of the small hotel located in the Smoky Mountains and excited to reconnect with friends, practice her English and take a break from lima Law School in Peru, where she lives.
But on June 22, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that temporarily prohibits a wide variety of visas from foreign employees, adding J-1 visas issued to South American academics who come to North America during their summer vacation. Sotelo’s projects have been suspended, and he is now suffering from locating a task closer to home.
As ski resorts try to figure out how to safely function the coronavirus pandemic, requiring face masks, reinforcing social distance on elevator lines, and eliminating catering, Trump’s order has added another impediment to next winter: hiring enough personal Transitority to perform very important responsibilities such as running Array chairlifts serving food and cleaning hotel rooms.
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Trump argued that foreigners posed a threat to Americans as the country tried to revive its economy.
“American staff are competing with foreigners for jobs in all sectors of our economy, adding the opposite to the millions of foreigners entering the United States for transitority work,” according to the order, which is expected to expire at the end of the year.
But Sotelo said there are many jobs to be done, in and around the ski resorts.
Many industry leaders agree and say that even with Trump’s order in place, it’s hard to cover seasonal jobs with domestic workers.
“Much of the explanation for why it is, and this is true even COVID, most Americans need a year-round job. They don’t need revolving doors,” said Dave Byrd, director of regulatory and threat affairs at the National Association of Ski Areas. .
Byrd said between 7,000 and 8,000 J-1 employees held jobs in several of the country’s 470 ski spaces during the winter. Another 1,000 to 2,000 employees arrive at U. S. resorts on H-2B visas, which are also prohibited on Trump’s orders. staff account for between 5% and 10% of the workforce in U. S. ski resorts, according to Byrd, who calls this a “critical amount. “
According to an NSAA report released in July, just over 202 US ski resorts have been released. But it’s not the first time Respondents said they struggled to hire a full workforce during the 2019-20 winter season, and an average of 44 jobs remained vacant. ski passes are under staff in summer and there are an average of 21 vacancies.
Many seasonal jobs do not offer benefits such as fitness insurance or pension plans, Byrd said, and it is even more difficult to hire domestic staff because ski resorts are located in rural spaces with expensive housing.
“Certainly, in Western tourist destinations, it is a great challenge for us to locate staff due to the cost of accommodation in luxury ski resorts: Vail, Crested Butte, Telluride, Taos, Jackson Hole, Big Sky, Sun Valley, Lake Tahoe,” he said.
Vail Resorts, which has 33 ski spaces in the United States and has depended on foreign workers, recruits more aggressively in local communities for next season and sees some interest among academics who have more flexibility because they are learning remotely or a full year because of the pandemic.
“We have already intensified hiring efforts for the winter season and are pleased with the effects so far,” said Vail Resorts spokesman Ryan Huff, who refused to say how many foreign employees are hiring the Colorado-based company for a typical winter season. . Huff noted that Vail Resorts can simply search for a “limited number” of foreign personnel as long as attendance restrictions are lifted for the rest of the season.
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In Ober Gatlinburg, the months of September and October are faithful to the recruitment of academics such as Sotelo in countries such as Brazil, Peru and the Dominican Republic, and this year it may be difficult to fill the 150 positions assigned to foreign workers.
According to the NSAA, an average of 85 jobs were not covered last season at resorts in the region that includes Tennessee, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina, largely due to their remoteness.
“We’ve been experiencing it for many, many years, but now it’s very critical,” said Jerry Huskey, threat chief at Ober Gatlinburg, who has worked in the station’s human resources branch for more than two decades.
He said if the order is still in force, the station, which employs about 500 people, may have to reduce its opening hours and close some of its restaurants this season. Meanwhile, the station touts an increase in hourly wages to attract staff and has controlled the hiring of non-labor conference staff in Florida.
Huskey began hiring foreign staff on J-1 visas in the mid-1990s after the economy made it harder for Americans to attract them. Initially, a dozen foreigners worked in the complex, and the number increased from season to season as the region evolved. and the attendance festival intensified.
“It’s an intelligent exchange of data and cultures . . . They need to see what’s going on in the US. But it’s not the first time They’ve never been here before, so they’re wasting that and we’re wasting it,” Huskey said of the existing situation.
The NSAA and ski resorts across the country were largely following two federal lawsuits challenging Trump’s order, one in Washington, D. C. and the other in the Northern District of California. The D. C. judge maintained Trump’s ban on J-1 and H-2B visas, so now the ski industry is hopeful of California’s opinion on who rejected the directive.
“That would be the first obstacle, of course. Beyond that, countries deserve to open up and then they deserve to be in a position to come here with this virus too,” Huskey said. “It’s a little vague and there are so many obstacles to overcome now. “