SOME IRISH students who are in the US this summer on J1 visas have reported major problems in finding employment, with long queues of applicants turning up for seasonal work.
Hundreds of Irish college students travel annually to the US for three months on J1 visas, with the prospect of work and travel during the summer holidays.
UCD student Jenni Skelly travelled with five friends to Santa Barbara in California for the summer. Since arriving on America’s west coast, neither Jenni nor any of her friends have been able to find employment.
They now plan to go to San Francisco in search of work because “most employers have stopped hiring seasonal staff this year”.
Eoin Murphy (22), from Dublin, has had difficulties finding work in San Diego this summer, and he partly attributes this to the bad reputation Irish students have among employers, linked to their social life.
“All the tourist places like Seaworld and the theme parks have up to 50 people queuing for interviews, and a lot of places don’t even consider hiring Irish students because of their reputation.”
Students who decided on the east coast destinations have fared better in employment, with many finding work within a matter of weeks. However, some have failed to secure a job there.
DCU student Susan Fulton travelled with three friends to Boston for the summer with no pre-arranged accommodation or employment, but within three weeks of arriving they were sharing a house with 17 Irish students and had jobs in retail outlets.
“Accommodation wasn’t too hard to come by – if you keep looking and don’t give up searching you will definitely get something,” she said.
“We have heard of very few people heading home from Boston due to lack of jobs.”
UCD student Conor Boden was on a J1 in Chicago. Of his group of five friends, two used contacts to arrange employment in a pub and a bank before leaving Ireland.
For weeks, Conor and his two other friends trawled through the bars, restaurants and hotels of downtown Chicago in search of employment, and eventually got work in a country club outside the city. “It takes an hour to commute from downtown, but I was so desperate I had to take it,” he said.
“My impression from Irish students here in Chicago is that work has been difficult to come by. It took a lot of people I know weeks to find work and, in a lot of cases, they didn’t get enough hours to pay rent and live.”
He attributed his friends’ financial woes to some reckless spending. “Some people have had to call home for money, and a couple of people have gone off home due to a combination of not finding a job and not budgeting properly.”
Shona Delaney from Dublin, who was on a J1 in the Hamptons in New York state, had organised a job in a country club before she left Ireland.
Although the work was hard, she and her friends negotiated their working hours.
“It’s 10am until close, six days a week, for everyone else working there. But because we are only here for the summer, we said we wouldn’t work more then 40 hours per week.”
Other Irish students had less luck finding a job, she said. “We are working with a guy from Donegal and he came over with five students. None of his friends got jobs and they all had to go home because they ran out of money.”
Dearbhla O’Brien, commercial director of student travel company Usit, said students travelling to the east coast usually found accommodation and employment a lot quicker than those who opted to travel to the west coast.
“Resorts where Americans holiday are traditionally the best places to find employment and accommodation. Those types of locations have been very successful for Irish students in the last number of years.”
A spokeswoman for the American Embassy in Dublin could not disclose the number of J1 visas issued this year because of US state department policy.