To the Editor:
Vicki Clark, president of the Cape May County Chamber of Commerce, recently wrote an Op-ed in the Cape May County Herald calling into question my statements regarding the J-1 Visa Summer Work Travel (SWT) program.
However, Clark’s piece provides misleading statements to Cape May County residents and fails to deliver factual evidence to show that the program provides any benefits to the working-class families of our great county.
Simply put, the SWT program decreases the number of jobs available to our year-round, unemployed residents and puts downward pressure on the wages of county residents fortunate enough to be employed in our county’s tourism industry.
Economists and politicians, from both sides of the political spectrum, agree this program puts American workers at a tremendous disadvantage. The facts and statistics on the program speak for themselves.
So how is the SWT program negatively impacting the county?
First, the law authorizing the SWT program does not require businesses to advertise to nor recruit county residents for seasonal positions intended to be filled by J-1 students. If our residents are unaware of positions available, how can unemployed residents seeking work apply and be considered for opportunities in an industry containing nearly 50 percent of the county’s total employment?
Moreover, according to the Economic Policy Institute, “There is no labor-market test or certification required to determine if there are willing, able, and available U.S. workers that may be displaced by [Summer Work Travel] participants.”
As implied by Clark, our county assumes there aren’t enough workers, both young and adult, to fill jobs handed to J-1 foreign students.
At the height of the summer season, J-1 students, between the towns of Cape May, Wildwood, and Ocean City, fill an estimated 2,500 seasonal, tourism-related positions. Our county, according to the latest data available from Opportunity Nation, currently has a disconnected youth rate of 15 percent, which translates into an estimated 1,600 youth, aged 16-24 neither in school nor employed.
Furthermore, our county witnesses an unacceptably high unemployment rate during the peak summer months, between 5 and 6 percent, which means there were over 3,000 unemployed adult residents.
Secondly, an overabundance of J-1 students concentrated in a single area, working in a particular industry, drives down the wages of American workers employed in that same industry.
The law’s language governing the SWT program only requires employers to pay a locality’s “prevailing wage,” meaning the higher of either the state or federal minimum wage, resulting in the program and its participants putting downward pressure on the wages of county workers.
This downward pressure not only affects workers’ income, but it also hurts the local economy, as 40 percent of county households earn an income insufficient in meeting the costs of basic necessities.
Finally, Clark’s statement on the benefits of foreign students spending at local businesses exemplifies the shortsightedness present in our county.
There are plenty of economic benefits resulting from employing county residents. Their incomes are being spent locally, throughout the year, and, additionally, when we employ more residents in tourism-related positions, it assists in extending the tourism season past September, when a majority of J-1 students return to their home countries, often taking the income they earned from our local businesses out of the county.
We must work harder to place our unemployed residents in existing opportunities, and in conjunction, our county needs to attract larger businesses and industries to the area, which will help establish a healthy, sustainable, and fair local economy, which benefits local businesses, their employees and our county’s unemployed.
ED. NOTE: Wall is running for Cape May County Freeholder.
Avalon – Eighty percent of working-age Americans have jobs, and the average after-tax income is up almost $4,000 since before the pandemic, significantly outpacing inflation.
