This visa program imports foreign students for summer jobs crowding out US teens

Every summer, tens of thousands of international college students come to the United States under the State Department’s J-1 Summer Work Travel visa.In theory, this is a cultural exchange arrangement fostering mutual understanding between Americans and foreigners.In practice, it’s a backdoor work program that quietly supplies businesses with short-term seasonal labor — while undermining what was once a cherished American tradition: the summer job. Last year, close to 140,000 students from over 200 countries came to the US on J-1 visas to fill lifeguard chairs, take tickets at water parks, serve burgers at fast-food counters and mind children at summer camps — young, temporary employees who show up on time and disappear by fall.The program is invisible to most of us.In fact, I’d never heard of it until I went on a Hinge date last week with one of its beneficiaries, a petite, curly-haired Colombian.Dropping her back at her apartment, I stumbled upon a room with three unframed twin mattresses laid out on the floor.

That’s when she explained she lived with her coworkers from the nearby pool park. She’s a full-time lifeguard, working six days a week.Her roommates are young women from Jamaica and El Salvador.

In the next room, the same layout for four men.The apartment next door? More of the same.Dozens of young workers, packed in like sardines, all here under the J-1 program.It hit me that this isn’t an issue of economics.Something more than jobs is being lost here — something quintessentially American.For generations of US teens, the summer job was more than a paycheck.

It was a proving ground.It meant scooping ice cream, sweating in the sun, learning to show up on time, dealing with difficult customers.It wasn’t work for survival; it was work for shaping character. There’s something distinct about the American summer job, something it’s not possible to grasp unless you’ve spent time abroad.From Peru to Cambodia, the idea of teens from a...