Irma Gerdness

I see we are doing the “zoomers are anti social weirdos” discourse again. Well, I was recently talking to some zoomer students who were laughing at a 60s hippy lib prof who was scolding them for not “working a season or two as a Warren Miller ski bum” like he did in the 70s. The connections he made there launched a career for him in western tourism and business. The reason they were laughing was because in their eyes, that door was closed for them, despite having the interest and the ability to go and work those jobs for a similar career path. I wanted to look into who exactly was responsible for the decision to replace American kids at Vail and Park City with J-1 labor from Argentina. Obvious answers like Vail Mountain are to blame of course, but something surprising to me was that American companies cannot sponsor J-1s on their own, they need to do this through a pass through NGO approved by the State Department as a type of “cultural exchange” for students (not our students, foreigner students). There are two main NGOs that do this for Rocky Mountain skiing and both of their CEOs make well over a million a year keeping your kid from these seasonal jobs while claiming American kids just don’t want to work, and need more diversity in ski towns (look at their promotional material if you don’t believe me). The truth is the pay is barely enough to cover resort dorm housing, so the big resorts barely enable young workers to make rent. The two that bring in the most J-1s to my local resorts are USE and PIEE. The Council on International Educational Exchange and the Universal Student Exchange. USE is headed by a Peruvian CEO Rafael Espinoza. The other group is headed by James P. Pellow who has an EdD (lol). These guys and their lobbyists benefit from a low paid foreign underclass of workers staffing ski resorts. Their organizations (plus the State Department) are responsible for taking away “ski bum” jobs from American teenagers under the guise of cross cultural exchange. The main lobby group that advocates day and night to keep your kids out of these jobs is the National Ski Areas Association. They lobby Congress, the State Dept, and Lawmakes to make sure the j-1s flow. Their materials claim that diversification and multi culture exchanges are much needed in ski areas! Vail Resorts and Powdr corp partners closely with USE and CIEE to keep their cheap foreign labor flowing. I never voted for any of this, zoomers surely did not, zoomers are being told they’re weirdos for not working these gigs, but good luck getting rid of any of this system as this is probably the first time you’ve heard of these groups.