J1 student visas offer an alternative for finding summer help

NATIONAL REPORT--Every summer, 70 to 80 European students arrive in Doswell, Va., to work at the 248-room Best Western Kings Quarters hotel. Summer occupancy at the property swells because the hotel is located next to the Kings Dominion amusement park.

But unlike resort hotels operating in the Northeast, Rocky Mountain states and other areas where the summer season extends from May until October, Kings Quarters primarily is booked solid in July and August--when students are out of school. So instead of recruiting H-2B foreign employees, Kings Quarters has experienced great success hiring overseas students working on J1 visas, said general manager Sonny Taylor.

The student employees work for about 90 days, starting in June, and then travel for a month before returning home, said Taylor, explaining that J1 student workers can legally reside in the United States for about four months.

For Kings Quarters, J1 student employees have proven to be a great solution to a labor shortage. J1 student employees are a viable alternative, said Frank Crissey, v.p. of operations for the hospitality-employee-leasing program at Janus Hotels & Resorts.

Janus, which owns or operates 70 properties, started the HELP division to hire and place J1 student workers with both its own properties and outside hotel clients in need of summer or short-term labor. This has been an extremely busy year for the J1 student employee placement division because of rising occupancy levels and the H-2B cap, Crissey said. Janus sends recruiters to job fairs overseas to interview and hire students about four to six months before their arrival. For the summer hiring season, the company made its recruitment trips in January, but because of the high demand for labor, recruiters traveled overseas again in February.

"We projected the H-2B cap and brought on 150 more people than we thought we needed," Crissey said. The company hired 600 J1 student employees and they're all employed.

To hire the workers, Janus deals with the Council of International Education and Exchange, which handles the visa paperwork. Janus specifically looks to hire students who have hospitality experience or who want to work in the hotel business.

"We select those we feel are best suited to work in hotels," Crissey said.

Once they come over to the United States, the students are employed by Janus, which provides insurance and handles all tax processing and recruitment fees. The hotels where the students work pay Janus about $8.95 an hour, Crissey said. Of that $8.95, student employees are paid about $6.50 to $7 an hour.

Taylor said it is especially hard for Kings Quarters to find steady help because it is not located in a major metropolitan market.

"It's really cool to hear the responses of the general managers who have used these kids," Crissey said. "The students are just so happy to have a job and they're eager to work."

But not all hotels are optimistic about J1 student employees. Cynthia Makris, general manager of the 85-unit Naswa Resort in Laconia, N.H., was hoping to employ 55 H-2B employees starting in May.

"I went to Jamaica twice to interview and handpick these employees," she said. "I decided to go with Jamaica because so many of them are already trained in hospitality. I was really thrilled.

"The beauty of the H-2B employees was that they could come early and stay late. There were so many pluses." When Makris found out in March that the employees would not be able to work in the country because the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services capped incoming H-2B applications, she had to go back to the drawing board. She has used J1 student workers in the past, but said there were many pitfalls. Namely, many of them from Eastern Europe could not speak English, and they all could not stay for the duration of the hotel's May to October season. Now, however, Makris has no choice but to hire J1 student workers because she can't find enough local applicants to fill the positions.

"We had a job fair Easter weekend and we can't get people for housekeeping and dishwashing jobs," she said. "No one wants these jobs. We're all scrambling for the same work force."

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