Thread: Aspen Skiing Co. won't hire pros on H2B visas this season

Thursday, September 24, 2009
Aspen Skiing Co. won't hire pros on H2B visas this season
Company scraps plan to import 57 foreign ski instructors after Labor Department changes rules
Scott Condon

ASPEN — The Aspen Skiing Co. will quit using H2B visas to hire foreign ski and snowboard instructors this winter because of the state of the economy and a ruling by the Obama administration.

The Skico planned to reduce the number of foreign instructors in the special visa program from 109 last season to 57 this season, according to company spokesman Jeff Hanle. But now it won't hire any instructors through H2Bs, he said.

“It's not something we wanted to do,â€

I guess teaching skiing and snowboarding is another of the jobs Americans won't do. Americans apparently prefer to sit in the lodges drinking hot toddies.

More Americans are going to work under the table so employers will hire them.

don't get giddy yet... last time I went skiing in CO. most of the help in the resorts could barely speak English. Now if they replace THEM too I'd give a whoop of joy...LOL@!

Actually, I believe that ski instructors in the U.S. West have traditionally been from other countries - sking not being considered an "American sport" until these more recent and more affluent times. At the outbreak of WWII, those from northern Europe were deported because a number of German spies had been posted at ski resorts throughout the Rockies disguised as "Norweigan sky instructors". That is hardly applicable to the present situation, but does point out that we evidently have never had a surplus of "U.S. born" ski instructors, especially as these resorts burgeon across the country.

It was disillusioning to learn, 46 years ago, that the U.S. Olympic Ski Team trained at Portillo Ski Resort in Chile to compete in an event which we still believed was to be made up of "talented amateurs". Portillo was considered one of the most luxurious ski resorts in the world, and, even then, people flew in from all over the world to stay and/and or ski there. And I am quite sure that few of the ski instructors there were Chilean!