I did not know this until I saw it mentioned on X (formerly Twitter). When a company hires J1 student temporary or season employees, they do not have to pay the 7.5% FICA or Social Security tax on the wages.
If a company hires a seasonal American student, they have to pay the 7.5%. If the company hires a foreign student, they don’t. This creates a perverse incentive for private equity firms, companies or corporations to hire foreign seasonal workers. This is true, I checked it out.
[SOURCE – and IRS SOURCE – and Alternate Source]
Apparently, this is now the common approach within the hospitality industry to save money and increase profit from payrolls. Unfortunately, this approach puts young Americans at a disadvantage when seeking summer or short-term seasonal employment.
For fiscal Year 2025: The U.S. State Department processed 506,142 applications and successfully issued 451,803 J-1 visas.
Now, obviously there may be some regions or areas where there are not enough young people to fill the jobs. However, if you do the math that 7.5% employer contribution saved is a lot of incentive for the corporation to avoid hiring seasonal American workers.
One student making $20/hr x 500 hours worked (over 3 months) = $10,000 payroll. The company has to pay an additional $750 in social security if the student is American. The $750 is saved if they use a foreign J1 student worker.
If the hospitality organization hires 20 seasonal workers for 3 months, using the J1 visa process saves them $15,000 in taxes.
A private equity group, multinational owner or corporation running the business is likely to be looking at the bottom line.
Additionally, this J1 entry allows the overall immigration system to be abused if the person doesn’t leave the USA at the conclusion of their employment. How many illegal aliens are created by those who enter under a J1 visa and never leave?
Suspicious Cat is now aware, and, well, increasingly suspicious:
wow….now it makes sense. I always wondered why the help up in Lake Placid was mostly foreign kids.
And all the kids on the ski slopes of CO, UT etc.
New England as well.
It is extremely common to see young foreign workers at ski areas and resorts like Orlando. Now it makes sense.
Yup. At ski resorts across the country in the winter…
At amusement parks in Ohio and elsewhere in the summer…
At beaches and coastal towns…
They’re ‘supposed’ to be work/study visas of limited duration.
They are limited, mainly just a few months: 2-3 or so.
But the ‘study’ portion is mighty small.
work and student visa fraud is geopolitical enteprise fraud like Covid 19
same scale, similar distrubuted institutional dynamics so pervasive its hidden in plain site
https://harlequin-laureen-72.tiiny.site/
We have friends who live in a neighborhood around northern Virginia. A very nice neighborhood. The lifeguards at their pool each summer were Eastern European kids.
The crown and parliament were pikers compared to these people.
These corporations!
Shocked. Yet again we learn that no one in the government has a grasp on the visa situation (or what I call the visa problem). I hope Sec Rubio is reading SD.
I am not on X or Truth Social but all Treepers that are need to flag this post and share it to Secretary Rubio, along with President Trump, Harmeet Dhillon, and DHS Secretary Mullin!!
My reading is the laborer pays no SS & Medicare. Doesn’t say the employer doesn’t pay their share.
W-2 Employees: You pay 6.2% which is automatically withheld from your paycheck. Your employer matches this by paying the remaining 6.2%.
Self-Employed Individuals: You must pay the entire 12.4% yourself through the self-employment tax. However, you can write off half of this amount on your federal income tax return.
How close to 100% is it these foreign workers are “self employed” probably paid in cash.
I believe the SS tax rate is 15.3%. Employer and worker each pay 7.65%
Self employed pay 15.3%
I would imagine a close scrutiny of the books of many places like ski resorts, etc. have practically no employees on the books yet run surprisingly well.
Some places may even write off/eat the cost of some of the employees instead of paying the taxes. There are only so many repairs to ski lifts, stocking the resort kitchens, buying foodstuffs, basic depreciable things like tables, chairs, room furnishings, etc that can be claimed without red flags.
Have you seen the price of ‘lift tickets’ at local ‘ski resorts’ say in Michigan or Wisconsin, compared to places like Vaill and Beaver Creek???
Unaffordable during the ski season…
Throw Park City and Deer Creek Ski Resorts onto the unafordable list.
Might the American people be the most screwed over people on Earth?!
We get NONE of the Upside but ALL of the Downside.
Looks like no one is, or plans to, look out for, “The Little Guy” aka you and me, except a few within the Executive Branch, mainly PDJT and Sec of Treasury, Scott Bessent…On the other side, we have Swampy Susie Wiles and Commerce Sec Howard Lutnick, a man that, for some unknown reason, happened to skip work the morning that his entire office was wiped out on 9/11/01. I suspect, and its only a sneaky suspicion, Lutnick was given a Heads Up, not to go to work that day.
The man is an insufferable slime ball and liar, who could not care less about the struggles everyday American’s face.
Our ENTIRE Visa System needs to be halted. Full Stop, as should all Legal Immigration, until every American that wants and needs to earn livable wages, is gainfully employed. Let the rest of the world, bear the load, and for AT LEAST 10 years!
Many or most of the Ski Patrol are volunteers who are compensated by getting a free season-pass. I saw one stat that only 15% of Ski Patrollers at Colorado resorts are paid.
Resorts also use a lot of volunteer labor (for lift tickets) for stuff like shuttle-drivers, snow-clearance, traffic-control, etc.
My son worked as a ski instructor/patroller in CO for a couple years and was paid enough to cover his gas to get to work.
He made good money in tips as a ski instructor, often from parents who went skiing, and paid for a “lesson” for little Johnny or Susie while the parents skied.
Yes, he got a free lift ticket.
Are they also exempted from income tax and state taxes?
Thank you Jeff Bezos, UBER & Bill Gates. Billionaires who got more money than god ….and still treat humanity like chit.
It ain’t just the hospitality industry….HELLCARE also uses these “student” J1s…..I take several calls at work (HR) about these ungrateful shitheads bitching about the taxes taken out of their paychecks and I am lectured about how they are tax exempt…🤮
And the J1 can be extended up to an additional 9 months.. Then we have the 4 year F1 student visa with its 36 month OTP with no taxes.. Bam… you have now established residency.. The participants, both student and employer, have paid no taxes.. Heaven forbid they get married and start families, all anchors with a US birth certificate and SNAP qualification.. To top it off these same students compete against the US citizen collage graduates for the same STEM jobs.. Further insult is the Optional Training Placement (OTP) is not available to the citizen graduates… Thanks Obama what a fine upstanding citizen you are
OPT was a Bush construct.
All research, roads begin with Bush.
Yes but the 15,000 tax exemption was pushed by Obama in 2009.. same year Disney fired its IT people and replaced them with student visa holders
A year ago I met a friend at his work site at the end of the day to go out for beers. He was finishing a few phone calls so I waited. He worked in the international applications department at a university. While I waited he had a phone interview with one applicant in a foreign country and after he hung up the call he mentioned that he could tell by the questions the guy asked that he was going to use the student visa to come to America but he would never go to any classes. Once here he would just disappear into America. A common thing.
Sundance opens the curtains letting the sunlight in.
Suspicious cat sitting on the window sill waiting for them to open
Like I said, if the Trump administration provided tax incentives, payroll incentives and targeted subsidies to make it more cost effective for employers to hire verified American citizens than cheap foreign labor, two things would happen overnight::
1: a great percentage of American citizens would magically! appear and become available to fill the jobs that “Americans won’t do”;
2. The businesses would be all over having a reliable method of validating citizenship.
The gazillions saved on welfare, schools, Healthcare and law enforcement would easily pay for the increase in living wages for citizens.
Oh, I forgot to add that The Big Pot of Money, that our esteemed Congressmen grift from, would shift away from providing businesses with cheap foreign labor to their grifting off programs helping American citizens.
Progress!
You are absolutely correct Elle !
All of the government provided protections and incentives for Tech, Medical, Agriculture, Hospitality and so on to hire foreign workers is because we have a bought and paid for Congress.
As I have said many times, Congress does not work for you, or me, or the vast majority of American citizens.
The apex of Visa corruption is the H1B visa program, and the entirety of the federal government is fully aware and facilitating the scam against the best intrests of 10s of millions of American citizens.
This has been going on for years. I had a freind who operated a B and B in Maine, they used foriegn labor always said no one would work otherwise.
iowa great lakes(okoboji) they also have been doing this for years.kids u there during the summer can’t be bothered to work.mommy and daddy have million dollar vacation lake houses and 300k boats.oh the humanity if they actually had to work and not party all summer long.
They are an ever smaller number, of exceptions.
Fixed: “Americans won’t do the jobs” at the wage the corporations are willing to pay.
The second it (total) costs more to hire a foreign worker is the second corporations pivot back to American labor.
BINGO!!!
100%!
Absolutely NO to any more subsidies. Instead PUNISH all employers with high taxes. We need PUNISHMENT, NOT subsidies.
DISINCENTIVIZE THIS ABUSE!!
Yah, that will work!! Just like prohibition and “Just say no” to drugs or prostitution worked. Not.
Forever this battle of human trafficking for cheap labor has existed. “Just say no” will NEVER fix it.
We need to end the incentives that cheap labor provides to powerful people and replace it with incentives for them to hire American citizens.
… forgot to add that during the JoeBama Auto-pen regime that Congress allowed the Auto-pen to be used to AUTHORIZE IMMIGRANTS access to Social Security SSI and Social Security Disability.
That means Social Security suffers a double hit thanks to immigrants: i.e. employers not contributing for their J1 Work Visa Employees punishing US Workers and the Social Security fund being raided by immigrants claiming SSI and Disability Benefits … with ZERO dollars being contributed.
To the best of my knowledge … immigrants are still eligible to draw SSI and SS Disability.
When we were on vacation to Yellow Stone Park allot of the young girls (18-22) working there were either Australian or from Eastern Europe. This was also true at Zion and the other US National Parks were visited. So, the US Government does it’s share of hiring these types of employees as well. Some were also Students at US Universities doing INTERNSHIPS related to their degrees.
“Now, obviously there may be some regions or areas where there are not enough young people to fill the jobs…”
Then hire OLDER candidates
Stop making excuses for the outsourcing of American jobs to foreigners
Start requiring employers to hire citizens.
AMERICAN citizens
WOW ! I have a lot to say. I have a front row seat to this and have been quizzing the DD, Cat Lady, hetero, middle Kettle, who works in management at a much beloved swanky CC Inn. Notorious wedding destination and the such.
The place is generously employed with J 1’s from Jamaica. Lovely hard working people who NEVER want to be confused with any of the other PoC. From what I understand, the J 1 program is 3 years in length if you are accepted and not seasonal, they work seasonally during which they cannot go home back and forth on airplanes. This has been conveyed directly to DD from them. They save all their money and send it to family members at home, especially for health care on the island. They come from a culture that treasures their elder family members.
Yes, the world wide company they work for sends them to other destinations following the vacation seasons of their holdings worldwide. LARK but Ma could be wrong if that’s the parent corporation.
It’s quiet the well oiled machine. Half the island must be on CC in the hospitality and food service agenciess. After the Jamaicans leave, it’s the Filopinos or Asians or Slovakians, you get my drift.
The same was going on in North Conway where DD just moved back from.
BUT Ma was accused of a felony and defrauding S.S. of thousands of $$$$$ from S.S., 2 months ago. They accused me of collecting almost 5,000 a month of fraudulent payments from my dead husband since 2023. They told me Pa died and was dead. I owed them a check, lump sum of thousands and they threatened me with prison and the whole f-ing thing was an eyeopener to the fact that the GOVT and every employee is broken and the whole of it all is FUBR.
Pa was and is alive and well, but somehow ended up on a MASTER DEATH LIST, that DOGE is secretly using to vet out S.S. fraud of collecting on dead peoples claims. I was told there was a 10,000 person mistake countrywide involved along with Pa. It has been a f-ing nightmare to correct. I have been to the local SS office ALOT !!!!
In May it was flooded with POC (Jamacians) who were applying for SS numbers. I was there I saw it and watched it, heard it and unless the Social Security Administration handles this J 1 program then what the hell was all that about.
I am not contradicting Sundance, I am adding first hand what I have seen and have heard from the J 1 front line only. I have tons more to say about this episode but this is not the place.
Most of them are not student age. Unless the guide line is 20-40 year olds.
Are they applying for Social Security Numbers ot Taxpayer Identification Numbers? TIN has the same digits & format as SSN, but is only used by non-citizens working the in the USA.
My Mom’s motel business used a number that looked like SSN but was only for paying Federal and State taxes.
My reply is sitting waiting for approval.
Foreigners have always gotten preference in short-term / seasonal hiring. Plus, the Feds specify minimum hours of work the foreign workers get; which disadvantages US workers when business is slow.
In the world of Private Equity Vulture Capitalism in Health Care, specifically, hospital ownership…I have found a distinct relationship between these entities and the world of ‘Travel Nursing’ and the multitude of ‘contracts’ available. I am also seeing more ‘foreign nurses’.
My hypothesis, aligns with the private equity quest for short term, 3-5 year increase in profits.
My quest is to find out ‘why’ they all do it? And many do… Where in the financial or other ‘business models’, does it seem profitable? For one, the traveler gets the benefits paid by the travel agency, not the employer. And most contracts are 13 weeks, that’s really short term and then the annual changes to the implementation of the ACA.
These ‘student’ workers…they need to pay what the rest of us do in taxes. America is being cheated, once again.
My dive isn’t as deep yet, as I would like it to be. I am of the humble opinion, and remember, am not a business/finance person…only in that I try to hang on to my paltry dollars…..I am of the opinion that some hospitals use a blended model, especially if they are ‘not for profit’. Privately owned, all bets are off.
About those private on line colleges…it would seem that the curricula is focused of corporatism and profits for the employer, developing managers to make and save them money…I go to different hospitals, and am thinking the curricula is performed…as I see the very same tactics, engaged in…from the nursing managers-I see it everywhere I go. Which leads me to:
Different academic institutions teach a different curriculum…and the higher tier, like University of Michigan, Wisconsin, IL, Texas, Iowa, LSU…to name a few…teach at a level that advances….advancement.
Again, my thoughts and hypotheses…am a long way from proving/disproving my shallow opinions…
And there was a popular saying back in the Panama Canal Treaty….the attitude towards the Canal employees…..”wer’re like mushrooms, they keep us in the dark and feed us sh*t”….
God Bless America….
Every entry visa should require payment of a SUBSTANTIAL bond, much bigger for women! and require weekly check-ins to assure the visa holder doesn’t disappear into the USA. Conditions need to include “no citizenship for children” born during their stay.
I was playing with the idea of moving to New Zealand, to be with my dad’s family….even though my ancestry would not have been a problem, I would still have had to cough up 14k for the privilege…
Tell that to Senator Bernie Moreno who wants the people who already pay the most into the system and wants them to pay way more. He sides with Pocahantas instead of the people who actually pay his salary and who pay the vast majority of all the taxes.
Time to close all the loopholes. I get that it’s “unfair” for a foreign student to pay into Social Security and Medicare with no hope of receiving anything back in the future. Let’s just chalk that up to the cost of being a foreign student in the USA. Certainly, domestic students shouldn’t be at a disadvantage.
No its not unfair, if they want to participate in all the abundance of America and what we have to offer…and they are not ‘citizens’, that can be ‘rectified’ by starting the process rather than playing the “take the money and run” game?
AS Maquis would say….its just another ‘gimmie-grant’ stunt….
Giving the Country away my whole life!
Easy fix, tax the J1 visa student pay 7.5% to go into the general tax fund not SSA since they will not receive SSA benefits. That removes the incentive. Just call it the J1 student employment tax. Roberts will be okay with it.
Chief Justice Roberts does Hussein’s Bidding.
Employers hiring non-immigrant visa holders ought to be required to pay double the FICA and Medicare tax, their portion and the employee’s portion, with all of that money going in to shore-up both programs.
Social Security is always on the verge of running out of money and going bankrupt. Maybe those extra contributions without new qualified SSA recipients might extend the life of the “trust fund” by another hour or two.
I have a solution…. tax more foreign help than Americans, problem solved!
Thank you Sundance. I sent this on to my Congressman for action to address. I think this should have an easy alternative tax fix that would be an easy star in the cap for any Congressman who would support it. It should have bipartisan support.
See also: many seasonal employees on Mackinac Island.
Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see SD mention that the foreign visa holders are also exempt from the tax.
That can be taken 2 ways:
1. Spitting in the face of American workers
2. Charging foreigners a tax that they can never become eligible to recoup is unfair.
I guess the answer is simple. How does Japan and EU handle this?
Given the ‘unfairness’ that the American citizen, a working American citizen, has paid for over the years….I find the idea of ‘being unfair’ offensive.
I favor a “visit” tax….and also a time limit on said “visits”. Applying to stay via citizenship, nope, Go home and start the process there…no more hand outs to foreigners, Hidden under quaint government names…
The demise of America’s health care has been largely in part due to those using the system and not paying for it. For the last 20+ years, I have seen that play out, over and over in the ER waiting rooms…where the family waits for ‘dad’ to come home from work and the whole fam damly comes to the ER for junior with a cold. With screaming crying siblings coughing and spreading their germs as well.
If you are an American citizen and work and/or live in a foreign country that taxes you then you should be able to file that on your US income tax return for adjustment.
Verify with a accountant.
I meant for their equivalent of J1 visa holders.
I believe they pay taxes in Japan and must apply for the national health insurance after a certain period.
They don’t have to come if they don’t want to pay the tax. We have no choice in the matter, pay or lose everything and go to jail.
I have to pay a “occupancy” tax on a simple hotel room when traveling, or for the privilege of booking a room in my own city.
It’s all in this document from the IRS
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-student-liability-for-social-security-and-medicare-taxes
Foreign students temporarily present in the U.S. in F-1, J-1, or M-1 status for less than 5 calendar years are generally nonresident aliens under residency rules of IRC section 7701(b). These nonresident alien students are exempt from Social Security Tax and Medicare Tax on wages paid to them for services performed within the U.S. To qualify for the exemption, the services performed need to be allowed by USCIS for these nonimmigrant statuses, and such services are performed to carry out the purposes for which such visas were issued to them.
seems obvious solution is to cancel that tax and give American students a fair go n’est ce pas?
Incredible! Every single damn time we turn around it’s something else to screw us!
Fells like that doesn’t it? The enormity of the fraud , corruption, and graft is crushing.
Foreign seasonal workers are used in Alaska at Denali/Mt. McKinley. Aramark’s hotels are staffed with them during the summer tourist season. I know people in Florida who would work there in the summer to get paid while seeing Alaska. They were in the minority.
My wife and I just completed a 22 day summer road trip around the Western state national parks and ski towns. From our first stop at Death Valley we noticed the almost complete use of foreign young people in the restaurants, shops and facilities. Same in the ski towns. Somewhat at Yosemite. We wondered if there was some sort of exchange program going on. Now it begins to make sense.
And notice, this would mean our own federal parks service is taking advantage of this tax loophole at the expense of our own young people.
I do believe the national parks hire a company to staff the venues. I don’t think they’re federal employees.
Great Wolf Lodge in LaGrange, GA seems to have youngish American citizens working in the amusements and cafe areas. The hotel cleaning staff are foreign derived.
This would explain the practice of airports hiring foreigners for jobs such as baggage handling, cleaning, wheelchair attendants, and even helpers in places like passport control and check in areas. Airports are flooded with foreigners now.
And now you know why Lindsay Grahamnesty always pushed for amnesty for illegal alien squatters & more foreign visa workers.
Seasonal tourism is a large part of SC’s economy.
Your example is light, here are the actual % for FICA ans SS
FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) is the combined payroll tax that funds Social Security and Medicare. For 2026, the total FICA tax rate is 15.3%, which is split evenly between employees and employers.
Employee Contributions:
Total FICA: 7.65% of gross wages.
Social Security: 6.2% on earnings up to the annual wage base limit of $184,500.
Medicare: 1.45% on all wages (no limit).
What the hell does congress do? Why do we pay taxes so these dopes can just give our money away? It’s not working.
They aren’t sending their best…
“NEW: I’m told by a federal law enforcement source that the suspect charged with murdering his girlfriend in Tucson, AZ on Thursday, then trying to flee the country, is an Indian national who was admitted to the US on a F-1 student visa after flying into LAX on 1/8/2024.”
https://x.com/BillMelugin_/status/2086474992364196244
.”Im told that according to federal records, up until his arrest for the murder, Batchigari maintained his legal status in the U.S. and his student visa had not yet been terminated despite his expulsion from the UofA, which would have violated the terms that that visa.”
It isn’t only students…
Employers should be required to pay a 10% fee to go towards the reduction of the federal debt for using all such people – increase costs of infrastructure, police, etc..
J-1 is supposed to be for Cultural Exchange. Waiting tables and manning the slopes hardly sounds valuable in this regard.
There are two nonimmigrant visa categories for persons who want to participate in Exchange Visitor programs in the United States. The J nonimmigrant classification is for participants of exchange programs, designated by the Department of State, that are designed to promote educational and cultural exchanges between the United States and other countries. The Q nonimmigrant classification is for participants of international cultural exchange programs designated by the Department of Homeland Security.
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/q-cultural-exchange
Thank you.
Some years back we stayed at Cannon Beach Oregon, a popular west coast tourist destination. I saw something that now makes sense. Foreigners were doing the housekeeping work. When they were finished all the linens were transported in a large industrial hamper on wheels to a building about a block away. You could hear the carts on the roads there. Our place wasn’t the only one as other inns did the same with the linens all going to that building. A central laundry. The building was large so I suspect that it was also a dormitory for the workers.
The entire town worked off this system. There are dozens of motels and inns there.
Chamber of Commerce Rules
Glad you are now reporting on this. There is MUCH MORE to tell…………….
A few years ago, in a visit to the Jersey Shore, my family and I patronized various boardwalk businesses.
At one place, a sit-diwn restaurant, we found a waiter from Venezuela on an F-1.
At a hot dog/pizza joint, a J-1 student from Eastern Europe, there for the summer season.
At another, an ice cream store, 1 or 2 Polish girls also
on J-1s.
It was obvious that the summer tourist season businesses ‘at the shore’ were populated by short-term workers bot from neighboring towns, but from far distant countries.
All these students were polite and friendly… but they were taking jobs away from local
kids the same age.
No one has a clue, do they?
As to
How
Many
People are here
on
Legal
Visas.
Allegedly temporary foreign workers (J, F H) are subject to Federal income tax, that doesn’t mean they pay any. They can claim 10 dependents living abroad. They are not required to report foreign income.
The son of a Saudi prince on an F1 student visa living in a million dollar apartment in New York attending Columbia need not report his income from a family trust. He probably gets a return.
How and When did it get like this ?
Who was President ?
Who was controlling CONgress ?
Is it legislation or is it executive policy ?
I went for pizza in the Chicago Mag Mile area. The staff had a bunch of kids from Ireland. Could have been Americans working and earning. Really no excuses for this, the employer should be paying a double tax.
Martha’s Vineyard. Nothing but foreign kids work in retail, service industry.
Remember the Obama birthday party on MV in 2021 or 2022? When all attendees were unmasked but all the hired help was masked. When questioned about it the official response was, “the guests were more sophisticated.” And didn’t need to wear masks like the help did.
Wherever there’s high wealth, same. They truly think they are superior. Americans aren’t slavish enough for their liking.
Maybe if people weren’t being paid $20/hour, the 7.5% wouldn’t be such a problem…
So disgusting they have baked in many things like this. And I don’t believe it was accidental. They knew this would be the result. We cant hate these people enough.
Many private clubs in the Northeast (for rich people) have a strategy to only hire foreign workers for their summer season. Some justify it by saying that US college students have to leave too early to return to school before the important Labor Day weekend peak business.
I am sure the SS savings make it even more compelling. Let’s at least collect the employer share!
Isn’t it just grand to be a young American citizen looking for a good paying job? Knowing the cards are stacked against you!
It would be interesting to find out how that special exemption on Social Security and Medicare taxes on wages of foreign students got inserted in the the law.