We just had a family vacation at a hotel just over the bridge into Cape Cod (“Work is the best vacation,” was Senior Management’s summary after breaking up sand fights between the 4.5- and 3-year-old). Our hotel and the restaurants in Falmouth, Massachusetts were staffed primarily with Eastern Europeans and folks from the Caribbean.
“They’re here from May through September,” explained one of the rare local waitresses. “I’ve learned all of the Serbian swear words.”
Our hotel was within a reasonable commute from the unemployment capitals of Massachusetts (Fall River and New Bedford). Rather than paying all of the bureaucrats and paper-shufflers to get these foreigners here on temporary visas, wouldn’t it make more sense to hire jobless natives to clean rooms and bus tables?
“They’re all on Section 8 [free housing] and MassHealth [Medicaid; free healthcare],” explained a manager, “so they’re happy to work for cash, but we have to pay W-2 so it doesn’t make sense for them to take a temporary job and risk losing their benefits.”
Given that the $75/night motel rooms on the Cape are now renting for $500+/night, why wouldn’t some of the foreigners seek to profit from Massachusetts’s unlimited child support system? I asked a few of the H-2B guest workers what they thought would be the maximum financial windfall from a brief interlude with a hypothetical dentist visiting from the Boston suburbs. They typically estimated annual cashflow of $5,000 per year (the correct answer for a sexual encounter in Germany), with a maximum estimate of $10,000 per year for 18 years (in fact, the guidelines provide for $40,000 per year for 23 years with additional judge-set amounts when a defendant earns more than $250,000 per year). They were aware that it was possible to collect child support without having been married, but not aware that it was possible to collect it while residing back in Eastern Europe, nor that a state-run bureaucracy existed to collect the money for them.
What did the guest workers like best about the Cape? Those from the Caribbean said “the cool dry weather.” Those from Eastern Europe said “the chance to improve my English.”
The H2-B workers seemed to be doing all of the jobs except management. There were Eastern Europeans checking guests in and out at the front desk. There were Caribbeans waiting tables as well as busing them.
While I was there a #Resisting friend posted this on Facebook:
I was going to get on Facebook to rant that we should all ignore the white supremacist march in D.C., but it seems that we (on my FB feed) are already all ignoring it. Excellent. But I will rant anyhow: 400 people wouldn’t even make the news if there were no counter-protestors (I know, from having been in marches that size). By comparison, there are probably more than 50000 tourists in D.C. right now. “Real” rallies in D.C. have at least 100000 people.
Her friends responded that it was actually only a gathering of 10 to 30 haters and thousands of righteous folks who hate the haters (plus thousands of overtime-collecting police officers?). My response, which garnered 0 “likes”:
Today I attended a gathering of roughly 200,000 white people. Traffic was slowed to a crawl and local services were overwhelmed. A handful of counter-protesters had been brought in from Eastern Europe and the Caribbean. The white supremacists said that they called their movement “Cape Cod.” (Census data regarding the 93% whiteness)
Our best tip for Falmouth with kids: Flying Bridge Restaurant, from which everyone can watch boats in the marina. If the food is slow to arrive the kids can walk up and down the edge of the marina. Maison Villatte is a great/authentic French bakery, though not a great choice for kids due to long lines in the summer (waiting to be served by an authentic Russian H2-B visa holder!).
Related:
- “DHS to issue 15,000 more guest worker visas amid clamor over labor shortage” (Washington Post, May 25, 2018)
You should have asked the management this question. My guess is that the “natives” probably don’t have basic work skills like showing up to work on time, regularly and sober and having the social skills to deal with customers. If the choice were between learning those skills and starving they would probably learn those skills — but that is not the choice in our society.
Where do the H2-B workers reside while working for five months on Cape Cod? Even off the Cape, housing would be costly, and transportation to work somewhat costly and unreliable. Even if the H2-B workers suffered dormitories or sleeping in shifts, employer-provided jitney buses, and cafeteria slop wouldn’t living expenses far exceed earnings?
Do any of these protester friends actually befriend guys who aren’t independently wealthy entrepreneurs?
Why worry? The immigrant economy has price tiers and spreads. I guess, one can rent from a fellow illegal for cash, and cheaply too, but it helps to speak the language.
A (mostly legal) Indian community of IT workers on H1B sprang in an exquisite area of Long Island, NY. Who is the primary customer? The City of New York. An Indian friend wanted a Java programmer job at $25/hr (and no benefits) but was rejected as too expensive.
How do they live? As you said, seven to a room, in shifts, and cook in a communal kitchen. Indian and Bangladeshi guys in their 20s. One of them told me, as a sign of appreciation (and that would mean A LOT in a poor country): Feel free to come by any time, have a nap if you need it, and we’ll cook some food for you too.
Identical in coastal Delaware resorts. 3 months of hard work followed by a few weeks of travel (most aspire to see CA). By and large, the more intelligent and enterprising young people from Eastern Europe, so their English skills are strong. One summer hire waitress is doing medical studies in her native Romania. Our fav waiter from the Ukraine married a Green Card holder (ironically from Russia) and is now a programmer. I did not ask his wife what their emigration status is, but she is now waiting tables at a more upscale restaurant than the one where they were working initially. One can usually identify the Eastern European waitstaff from a distance as their BMI hovers around 18.
(They share housing a few miles away where it’s dirtcheap and mostly rural, and procure bicycles for transportation.)
Deplorable Prole: At the hotel where we stayed they seemed to have a shabby dorm operation at the far end of the parking lot. Inland housing on the Cape is not crazy expensive. In any case, I think that housing is included in the compensation package for these guest workers.
Our Gulf Coast summer resorts used to hire a lot of high school students until the schools started convening in mid-August instead of after Labor Day. The high schoolers were really cheap because they lived at home (townies I think in New England?).
The resort folks bitch about the H-2B housing cost but life goes on. Nobody in the education industry ever explained the rescheduling.
“Townies” work in the resort where I now live, but they wouldn’t be sufficient, especially the last two weeks of August and early September when college kids largely return for the fall semester (similar to what “the other Donald” notes above). In Delaware, waitstaff needs to be 18 yo to serve alcohol which disqualifies high school students except seniors from restaurant jobs beyond bussing tables or working as cashier.
The year-round restaurants seem to hire Americans and the seasonal places trend to the H-2B workers. Our 16 yo son has worked this summer as a busboy at the year-round, well-established pizzeria which has never resorted to H-2B workers (hasn’t needed to perhaps because of potential year-round employment??). He reports that the 20-something waitresses routinely complain about “deadbeat” boyfriends who are unable to pay their share of the rent (they don’t live in the resort, but in affordable areas to the west).
@PhilG – I believe Section 8 is subsidized, not “free” housing. But certainly “free” sounds better if you’re trying to make a point.
Your “reporting” (more commonly known as hearsay) does nothing to shed any real light on the why there are not more residents of Fall River and New Bedford doing seasonal work in the restaurants of Cape Cod. Maybe you should take a little detour on the way home and ask them?
If working on the books for 2-3 months a year would jeopardize some of the benefits you receive – and if there were no real prospect for you to support yourself the other 9-10 months of the year – would you do it?
I wonder how many men you’ve made lucky and then subsequently unlucky by educating the temporary staff at places like this.
Bill: Section 8 isn’t free? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/306872/ says beneficiaries pay 25 percent of their income for rent. If their reportable income is zero (and why wouldn’t it be?), they would pay $0, no? Then their house should be essentially free.
Would I work extra W-2 hours if faced with a 90+ percent effective tax rate like many Americans on welfare? Only if work were entertaining!
If I were Eastern European and had my sights set on landing a fat paycheck for mating with a rich American, I wouldn’t admit to knowing the child support numbers either.
Here on the Jersey shore, everyone working the boardwalk rides is from Eastern Europe. A short ride away, black and Hispanic Americans sit in poverty, unemployed. It’s odd.