Some Leisure Industries Trust to Luck--of the Irish

It’s been getting more difficult for William Erwin, general manager of Casino Pier, to find enough local students to run the rides, arcade games and food concessions each summer.

This year, he found help in Ireland.

Erwin is one of a growing number of resort employers who are turning to foreign students to help fill the gaps.

In Ireland especially, where unemployment is nearly 21%, students are more than ready to spend their summers operating a Ferris wheel in Wildwood or pushing a rolling chair in Atlantic City.

“Whereas a lot of American students take time off in the summer to travel, the majority of students who come here on a visa have to work to make money for schooling,” said Cathy Burke, owner of the Irish Pub in Atlantic City. She regularly hires several Irish students for her restaurant and 100-room inn.

“They come here with a purpose and a good, strong work ethic,” she said. “They’re quality people.”

To assist the students, many employers provide housing or help them find rooms in local inns and rooming houses. Burke puts up many of her foreign students at her inn.

“It’s kind of like Ellis Island around here,” she said.

Several agencies in the United States and abroad help foreign students obtain visas to work for the summer and often provide inexpensive chartered flights. Some employers, such as Erwin, travel overseas to interview candidates and sign notes promising jobs so they can obtain visas.

Of the 600 seasonal employees at Casino Pier and the adjoining Water Works water park, about 70 will come from Ireland, France and Spain, Erwin said. They can legally arrive on June 1 and must leave by Oct. 19, he said.

The general manager of Mariner’s Landing amusement pier in Wildwood also regularly travels to Ireland to interview students.

“This year we expect to have about 75 foreign students out of the 250 people we hire for our water park and pier,” said spokeswoman Jacqueline Palumbo. The students are from Israel, Turkey, China, England and France.

“We would have no trouble getting American students because we’re in a great location,” she said. “But we’ve found that there is a strong desire among foreign students to work here because they are really in need of employment.”

Not all seasonal employers at the seashore are willing to help reduce unemployment in foreign countries, however. Ronald Stokes, general manager of Stokes Laundry Inc. in Wildwood Crest, said he concentrates his recruiting efforts on universities in this country.

“We’ve had Irish students before and they didn’t last all summer,” he said. “They like to take off the last two or three weeks to travel. At least with college students here, you know they leave around Labor Day.”

In addition, Stokes said, many foreign students “work two or three jobs while they’re here to make a lot of money, but then they bug out and get tired. Yet they’ll stay and visit this country until their visas expire.”

Larry E. Belfer, who hires many foreign students each summer to push his Atlantic City Famous Rolling Chairs, says they often come to the United States “to learn the language and learn the culture.”

But Belfer has been so successful with his foreign students that he has set up an agency to refer others to seasonal jobs in the area; three casinos have already signed on.

“They can’t work in the casino because it takes too long to get licensed, but they can take jobs in the casino’s hotel and restaurants,” Belfer said.

“Hopefully we’ll have a nice little marriage here,” he said. “I’m not trying to take away from local labor, but this provides a nice buffer for the summer crunch.”