Migration Lowers Wages
An ultra-exclusive Hamptons yacht club catering to the wealthy and well-connected was forced to suspend its members-only restaurant service for multiple days after several of its kitchen staff were booted from the country over visa issues, The Post has learned.
The swanky oceanfront Devon Yacht Club in Amagansett — which reportedly charges around $100,000 in initiation fees — canceled its Wednesday night dinner service after its foreign cooks had to leave the US because of problems renewing their H-2B temporary work visas, according to a letter sent to members the same day.
Food service was also canceled Thursday and was not expected to be back up and running until Friday’s lunch service, the club informed its deep-pocketed members — a group that once included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s parents.
“The H2B visa approval for our cooks is still not resolved,” the letter obtained by The Post stated, referring to special visas that allow US employers to fill seasonal or temporary positions with foreign nationals.
Eight staffers from the club were reportedly booted from the country, according to local outlet, The East Hampton Press.
However, the precise circumstances aren't clear:
In a statement to The Post, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said, “Neither [Customs and Border Protection] nor [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] were involved in this incident.”
Similarly, the East Hampton Town Police Department confirmed it had “no records or indication of outside agency activity.”
H1B and H2B visas are a form of indenture, something everybody denies. The H1B visa is for "highly skilled professionals in specialized white-collar roles" (cough), while the H2B visa is for temporary, non-agricultural seasonal labor. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Are H2B visas a form of indenture?"
Legally, H-2B visas are not a form of indenture, but human rights organizations and labor experts frequently compare them to modern indentured servitude due to how the program is structured.
. . . Critics, including the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), argue that several core mechanics of the guestworker program mimic historical features of debt bondage and indenture:
The employer owns and controls the visa. If a worker quits or is fired, they instantly lose their legal immigration status and must leave the country. The visa is non-transferable; a worker cannot freely quit to take a better job at a different company without a highly complex, pre-approved petition process from a new sponsor.
Many workers take out high-interest loans in their home countries to pay third-party recruiters for job placement, visas, and travel. Even though charging these fees is technically prohibited under U.S. regulations, the practice remains widespread. This leaves workers trapped by massive debt before they even begin working.
Because complaining about wage theft, poor housing, or unsafe working conditions can lead to termination—and subsequent deportation—workers rarely report abuse.
This raises the question of exactly who got the kitchen workers deported -- apparently there was no CBP or ICE action involved, snd there were no complaints to the local police. So was the yacht club itself somehow involved? The Devon Yacht Club has a hinky recent history here:
Devon Yacht Club is a private facility tucked away on Napeague Bay, and been in the spotlight for the past year or so due to a controversial plan to redevelop the facility and the subsequent expulsion of a handful of members who spoke out against the plan.
. . . This saga adds to what has been a bumpy summer for Devon Yacht Club, starting with a string of lawsuits that stemmed from the expulsion of the members for what they say is opposition to the divisive redevelopment plan, which called for the demolition and relocation of club structures about 30 to 40 feet inland. Court papers say the cost was to clock in at $35 million.
So did the yacht club replace the deported kitchen staff with other H2B workers, or did they hire local workers? Did they have to pay the local workers more? So far, we don't have answers.In my tech career, I often worked alongside H1B workers, which are at least theoretically required to have bachelors' degrees for "highly skilled" work, but in reality bachelors' degrees are optional for many tech jobs, and it's generally recognized that college graduates are underemployed as things stand: /p>
Overall, 52 percent of college graduates were underemployed one year after degree completion. That is, they were working in jobs that don’t typically require a bachelor’s degree to obtain. For those initially-underemployed workers with ten years of data, 45 percent of them were still underemployed after a decade, even given the post-pandemic labor market conditions that favored workers.
The whole idea that we have to import foreign workers to compensate for labor shortages is a scam. We import foreign workers to keep wages down. But the big unspoken truth about all such imported workers is their English language skills are pretty poor, they're difficult to work with as a result, but anyone who complains about this gets into hot water.