When Gabriela Riquele isn’t busy working as an attendant at the Madonna lift at Smugglers’ Notch in Vermont, you might find her helping kids get on the Sterling T-bar or working behind the counter at the Country Store in the resort’s village center.

“I never have a dull day,” says the 23-year-old from Santiago, Chile, who is now one of the dozens of South American students working at Smuggs’ on a seasonal J-1 visa.

Technically known as the Exchange Visitor Program, the J-1 temporary work visa allows international students to come to the United States for four months to share their culture and ideas. Along with the separate H-2B visa program—which permits employers to temporarily hire non-immigrants for up to 10 months per year—J-1 workers have become an integral part of the seasonal workforce at Smuggs’ and other U.S. ski areas, largely because they provide enthusiastic help at a time when service workers are in very short supply, especially in rural mountain communities.

“H-2B is 100 percent vital for us,” says Sam McDowell, human resources coordinator at Smugglers’ Notch. “It fills a labor shortage we can’t do locally.” So does the J-1 visa. “Without the J-1 workers,” says McDowell, “we wouldn’t have all of our lifts running.”

Filling Workforce Gaps

About one in six U.S. ski areas draw seasonal staff from a foreign work visa program, according to a 2019-20 survey conducted by the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA). These workers comprise a small portion—typically less than 10 percent—of the workforce, although percentages have been rising in recent years, and not just at large resorts.

“There is this misconception in the industry that H-2B visas are only for the big resorts,” says Keith Pabian, founder of Pabian Law, a firm specializing in immigration, and the CEO of Seasonal Connect, an online platform that helps employers find seasonal workers. “It could be a huge help to small- and medium-sized ski areas. In fact, in the lodging and club industries, small organizations routinely use H-2B visas to fill much-needed spots, even if just for a handful of people.”

Smaller resorts also can have success with the J-1 program, says Phil Simon, vice president of professional exchange programs at CIEE, a nonprofit that facilitates international exchanges. “A couple of factors to consider are the availability of housing, and sufficient hours so that participants cover their costs and living expenses,” notes Simon. “For example, employers without snowmaking and those that only operate on the weekend might not be suitable.”

J-1 is overwhelmingly the most used foreign work visa, according to NSAA, with between 6,000-8,000 students working at ski areas per year. H-2B is the second most utilized foreign work visa, accounting for more than 1,300 ski area employees in 2019-20.

The vast majority of J-1 workers who arrive in the U.S. during winter work in the ski industry, either directly at ski resorts or in supporting businesses in ski towns, says CIEE director of employer relations Cara Mills. Students chosen for the program sometimes have experience with winter sports, and all have at least some English language skills—more fluent speakers tend to go to public-facing positions, while the less fluent are often placed in back-of-house jobs.

Skilled work. Whereas J-1s are students who are expected to balance work with cultural experiences, H-2Bs are skilled workers recruited for specific jobs, such as food service, hospitality staff, and specialty workers like lift operators, ski instructors, and snowmakers.

“I can’t rave enough about the quality of our H-2B employees,” says Kelly Renoux, director of employee experience at Colorado’s Copper Mountain, where 60 H-2B workers serve in various food and beverage positions.

Most have prior experience in the hospitality industry, filling a critical need for Copper, says Renoux, and all are recruited in Mexico, where many grew up in the tourism industry.

Cultural diversity. In addition to filling vital jobs, participants in both programs bring much-needed diversity to mountain towns like Frisco, Colo., and Jeffersonville, Vt.

“They become part of the community and part of the experience for myself and everyone else,” says McDowell. “These are people from all around the world who have very different perspectives than people in small-town Vermont. The program benefits Smugglers’ as much as it does the students.”

Competitive Pool

Resorts need to start the process of recruiting H-2B workers at least six months in advance, starting around the Fourth of July for winter, says Pabian. “The legal process starts before the workers come in,” he says, and it includes key filing and compliance deadlines that fall within a narrow window.

Connecting with a sponsor organization like CIEE is the first step toward attracting J-1 workers. Sponsors then work with employers to recruit students, a process than can stretch over a nine-month period, says Mills.

Visa caps. International workers are not an unlimited resource. “There’s more students who want to come than there are visas available, and more employers who want to use them than actually can,” says Mills of the J-1 program.

The annual cap on J-1 visas is 100,000 students. The H-2B program is capped at 66,000 workers annually, divided evenly between summer (April-September) and winter (October-March) arrivals.

The limits are occasionally tweaked by lawmakers, but nonetheless, competition for both H-2B and J-1 workers can be fierce. That puts workers in the driver’s seat when it comes to matching with prospective employers.

“You have to be attractive to H-2B workers,” says Pabian. “These workers know they are in demand, so having a nice place to work and good wages are the drivers.”

Housing is key for resorts to offer  workers in order to compete. “You can’t bring a participant [in the J-1 program] to Vail if you can’t find them housing or pay a living wage,” says Mills. “We see more and more hosts investing in housing in order to be successful.”

Copper, for example, houses its H-2B and J-1 employees in its 600-bed Edge Building, which is walking distance to the slopes and includes everything from an employee dining room to an internet cafe and rooms for yoga classes. Housing is provided for J-1 workers, while H-2Bs pay rent, with a shared studio apartment going for about $850 per month.

Other inducements for J-1 workers may include meal discounts, bonus pay for students who work until the end of their stay in the U.S., ski passes, transportation to regional cities and local attractions, and planned activities and outings.

McDowell says that promoting the family atmosphere of Smuggs’ and the overall Vermont experience is an important part of how recruiters market the ski area to prospective J-1 employees.

These have an impact on J-1 employees, whose word-of-mouth endorsement can be key to future recruiting efforts. “I ski every day I have off,” says Riquele, who has also been taking part in company-sponsored activities, like bus trips to Burlington and New Year’s celebrations on the mountain.

Key Program Differences

One key difference between the H-2B and J-1 programs is how much applicants cost employers to recruit, train, and retain. Sponsor organizations like CIEE take care of much of the recruiting and logistical costs of getting J-1 workers from their home countries to their respective mountains, but these costs are borne by employers under the H-2B program.

The latter also has compliance and documentation requirements that usually call for attorney involvement. “H-2Bs are very expensive,” says McDowell. “It costs thousands of dollars per petition.” However, he says, that’s not out of line with how much the resort has to spend recruiting domestic workers.

Both programs require employers to offer competitive pay: “It’s not cheap labor,” emphasizes Simon.

Work restrictions. H-2B workers have to stay in the job they applied for, whereas J-1 workers can move freely among multiple positions. Riquele, for example, works the lifts at Smuggs’ about 40 to 45 hours a week, plus another eight to 10 hours at the convenience store.

The resort utilizes both J-1 and H-2B workers for summer and winter operations, says McDowell, though H-2B workers can work more of the year. Since J-1 students can only work for four months, positions typically expire in March. Some J-1 visa holders choose to work less than that to allow time to travel and explore the country.

Conversely, H-2B workers are more likely to move around the country in search of more work once a seasonal position ends. Seasonal Connect, says Pabian, was developed in part as a resource for employers looking to recruit these “in-country transfer” workers.

H-2B workers can reapply for the program for up to three years, and many return to the same jobs in subsequent seasons. “You get reliable workers year after year,” says Pabian.

Ski resorts can sometimes bring back J-1 workers, too. Students can reapply for the visa as long as they’re in school. About 10 percent of the J-1 students recruited through CIEE are returnees, says Mills.

HR investment. Onboarding and training are required for both J-1 and H-2B workers, of course, but “there’s a lot more investment in management and human resources” for the J-1 students, says McDowell. Cultural adjustments, language barriers, lack of prior work experience, and the realities of living in a rural community with no car mean that “J-1s need more support and resources than U.S. workers,” he says.

At Smuggs’, that includes weekly bus trips for shopping, assistance with opening bank accounts, bilingual training programs, and mentorship from a “resident advisor.”

A Sound Investment

Renoux says Copper’s visa-carrying workers provide security by diversifying the pool of seasonal workers: “We treat it like an investment portfolio. You can’t put all of your eggs in one basket.”

The H-2B program may be expensive, says Renoux, but it provides skilled workers for positions that the resort might not otherwise fill. “It’s costly, but it’s proven to be great,” she says. “Prep cooks and dishwashers, for example, are positions that we tend to struggle with domestically, but when we post it internationally, we get great demand.”

McDowell acknowledges that managing the resort’s J-1 program is “a huge time sink, but I truly believe that this program benefits Smuggs’ just as much as it benefits the students.” Without J-1 and H-2B workers, he says, “It would be a worse product for our customers, and we’d be making less money.”