Originally Posted by
jddbz
Over 350,000 J1 visas are issued ever year, mostly to foreign students 18-22 who work low paid, hospitality retail etc jobs in the US for the summer. It mightn't sound like a huge number spread across the entire US, but in some concentrated locations they can be a huge chunk of the low wage summer labour force. I know San Diego in the mid 2000s was getting approx 5,000 Irish J1 students per summer alone for example
I'd imagine quite a lot of US businesses would love to have them currently for this summer, given the supply of labour issues.
Oh, totally. This is a vital labor force for the US tourism industry! I also did it during my UG in Europe and this was the first time I came to the US. These programs take time though and you start the procedures months in advance. This is not a short term solution and I don't think it's feasible to bring these people in easily. It would be my educated guess that they just don't exist on the supply side this year. I'd imagine it is much easier to bring workers from Mexico (if politically palatable) or Canada (given that their Dollar is weaker so this is still a pretty good deal for them) but alas even these borders are (semi-)closed. This is why I think US will open to Canada/Mexico before it opens to EU.
Originally Posted by
Awtas
With the EU opening up, that spending might get diverted to the other side of the ocean. I still haven't heard any explanation from feds why it is not save to come here from the EU but it is considered safe enough to come here from Turkey which has much higher infection rate per capita than most (if not all) of the EU countries.
If enough people can get in to Europe which is not obvious. I think home market will dominate this season. I was not aware of the Turkey thing; if true this is just silly.
I also am not so sure that the Europe will stay open. Just saw these statistics from FT:
https://www.ft.com/content/d4abbe5e-...a-2d3efa2ed52b. This does not look optimistic and now we have Euro 2020 with semi-full stadiums and fairly open borders within Schengen to my understanding. I hope higher vaccination rates in Europe will prevent fourth wave but every day I'm more and more skeptical. Once the hospitals start being overrun again, that will be it for open borders. Maybe the FEDs are just anticipating this. Certainly Canada does and this is why they are pushing for such high vaccination rates with two doses before they open. To my understanding vaccines are pretty effective against delta when it comes to severe disease (not as effective as against alpha and original strain and not all vaccines but still) but we don't know much I think when it comes to the spread...