Skip to content
Opinion

Summer Shore jobs go international

The summer job at the Shore is a microcosm of what is happening, often illegally, in the landscaping, hotel, construction and other industries.

I’M JUST BACK from a week’s vacation in North Wildwood and I’m happy to report there are still American college and high school kids working at jobs like servers in restaurants and life guards in a water park we visited.
Sadly, they are vastly outnumbered by an annual influx of foreign workers,mainly from Russia and surrounding central European countries. I don’t think this is a good thing.I believe it plays into the great debate we’re having over the manner in which legal and illegal workers are undercutting the American worker.
I get why employers might be attracted to these workers. Wages are the biggest cost they can control and these are workers that are willing to work tough jobs for by and large what the average American would demand. Does it mean that these tough jobs are jobs that Americans won’t do or that these are jobs that require more pay to get done?
I remember that I first noticed the influx of foreign workers 10 to 15 years ago in Cape May. This first wave of workers were from Ireland and their pleasing accents and manners were very nice in a restaurant we often went to. I heard at the time that we were seeing more of these workers because Cape May and other towns were extending the summer season past Labor Day and American college and even high school students were in school in increasing numbers before Labor Day.
I started on my radio show to rail against this trend of even high schools opening before Labor Day. I supported legislation in Harrisburg that was trying to curtail this trend. I did shows asking questions about American kids who had flocked to the shore for decades and whether they no longer wanted the experience of the trade-off of a relatively tough job for the experience of a summer at the beach and the memories.
I think the fact that foreigners can stay past late August is just an excuse. Employers through the H2 B Visa program and the J-1 program favor these workers over Americans because of the fact they have much more control over them. They are committed to being here for the summer and beyond and they do possess a good work ethic and are courteous in dealing with the public.
A case in point was a waitress we had at a diner whose ambiance is classic ’50s motif of Elvis, cars, ponytails and jukeboxes. The waitress from Russia told us it was her first day and asked us to point to her order from the menu because she wanted everything to be perfect.
She was very polite and attentive. Would an American worker have been as formally polite? I don’t think so, but that doesn’t move me away from my position that I’d prefer to be being served and tipping an American student working in this summer economy. It just doesn’t feel quite right, particularly when we hear talk from Main Street to Washington about jobs and the economy.
Even more disconcerting to me was the young woman with a central European accent in the center of the Wildwood boardwalk running one of those game booths. In very mangled English, she was asking people to pay $3 for a shot at getting a stuffed animal if she couldn’t guess your weight within 3 pounds or age within two years. This job required a lot of speaking over a microphone and her accent and lack of informal English slang were noticeable.
Are these jobs Americans won’t do or do effectively? No, they are a microcosm of employers going outside the marketplace to be allowed to create an artificial marketplace. The summer job at the Shore is a microcosm of what is happening, often illegally, in the landscaping, hotel, construction and other industries.
This development of American employers reaching out for foreign workers has spread to the IT industry. I don’t think these jobs are jobs that Americans can’t or won’t do, but a concerted attempt by Silicon Valley, Zuckerberg and others to undercut the wages and benefits of American IT professionals.
So I’m glad the Russian waitress and the central European weight-guesser have a chance to experience America and the Jersey Shore. However, I support people and policies that would enable more American kids to have that great summer experience.