J-1 Visa Program Jeopordized by Lack of Housing158

J-1 Visa Program Jeopordized by Lack of Housing158
By Newport This Week Staff
on August 15, 2024

By Jim Fry


Four years after the worst of the COVID-19 shutdown, the number of overseas college students trav­eling to Newport for the summer season has returned to pre-pan­demic levels.

A U.S. State Department website estimates there are 370 college students holding J-1 visas in New­port this summer, 10 more than in 2019. However, higher housing costs are threatening the seasonal work program.


Kim Hapgood, program man­ager at Sail Newport, said that groups of J-1 sailing instructors used to rent the same houses year after year. But after people “started streaming in” and “paying stupid amounts of money,” some properties have been taken off the market. She pointed to one house that remained, which rented for $16,000 for the summer of 2019 but has since doubled in price.

“I’m sorry, that’s obscene,” she said.

As housing costs rise, employers are increasingly turning to H2B visas, a U.S. Labor Department pro­gram that allows workers to stay up to six months but does not en­courage cultural exchanges, said Erin Donovan-Boyle, president and CEO of the Greater Newport Chamber of Commerce.

Said William Corcoran, former owner of Newport Tent, “The housing crisis . . . may ultimately end this valuable [J-1] program.”

Corcoran said students work hard, holding down a day job arranged through the program, while many take second jobs at night.

“Local labor is becoming harder and harder to find as Newport’s housing stock is increasingly being purchased by retirees and people seeking second, third and fourth homes, while pricing out the fam­ilies that once supplied Newport’s seasonal labor,” he said. “There­fore, the J-1 students are key to help fill the void that has been cre­ated by a lack of local labor.”

Students taking advantage of the program spend up to four months working in local restau­rants, hotels, yacht clubs and other businesses that scramble to serve Aquidneck Island’s surge of vaca­tioners from late spring through summer.

“They have been instrumental for a very long time, decades, in Newport, particularly the Irish stu­dents,” Donovan-Boyle said.

She points out that Newport’s sister city relationship with Kinsale, County Cork, helped create a pipe­line.

Sail Newport still employs 12 to 20 Irish students each summer, all certified sailing instructors. The ar­rangement appears to be mutually beneficial.

“We’re earning way more than we would have in a job at home,” said Alex O’Hare, of Dublin.

Hapgood said U.S.-trained American sailing instructors who face steeper college costs than the Europeans won’t pay what it takes to live here.

By summer 2019, Newport Tent employed 22 J-1 visa holders, many from former Soviet Bloc countries of Eastern Europe, such as Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and Poland. While the program was not formally shut down during the pandemic, obtaining a J-1 student work visa became extremely diffi­cult.

According to the State Depart­ment website, only five students were in Newport on a J-1 visas in 2020, down from 360 in 2019. Statewide, the number dropped from 946 students in Rhode Island in 2019 to just 26 as the pandemic restricted international travel. Even in 2021, only 16 students trekked to Newport for summer work, ac­cording to the website.

Before the pandemic, New­port Tent provided housing, but Corcoran said that stopped amid COVID travel restrictions.

Donovan-Boyle said the chamber, with grant funding, con­sidered how to support the pro­gram for seasonal workers. Other chambers provide help with pa­perwork or “welcoming dinners,” but she said, “We were just not able to competitively support the program.”

Employers are not required to provide housing. Private com­panies that serve as sponsors to connect students are expected by the U.S. government to “ensure” housing, although those who work at Sail Newport are on their own. Sail Newport does provide a housing allowance to each worker.

Still, spirits seemed high when six of the sailing instructors gath­ered with a reporter on a deck overlooking Newport Harbor after a day of teaching adults to sail. Their laughter mostly involved summer experiences around New­port.

“It’s a bit of a culture shock when you first arrive; everything’s a lot bigger,” said Sally Osslyn, of County Cork.

Sail Newport arranged for them to attend a Newport Polo match, the opponent being a team from Ireland. And they all experienced America’s pastime at a Newport Gulls baseball game.

Some had followed relatives here, but most were connected to Newport by a sailing club back home.

“At its heart [the J-1 program] is a cultural exchange with the primary goal of fostering people-to-people connections to create lasting re­lationships,” a State Department spokesperson said,

But if solutions aren’t found to ease the local housing crisis, J-1 students flocking to Newport each summer could become a thing of the past.