WE CALLED ATTENTION TWENTY YEARS AGO.

Minding the Campus contributor Jared Gould goes looking for fudge and finds something to fret about.  "Mackinac Island’s Workforce Offers a Preview of the Grim Job Market Facing American College Grads."

At first reading, it sounds like an update on "Working their way through college – in Bulgaria."

I left frustrated by what my trip revealed about the state of the American labor market.

Nearly every worker I encountered on the island—waitstaff, hotel clerks, bike rental attendants, even the carriage tour guides—was a foreigner. Some were seasonal guest workers. Others were international students, ostensibly in the U.S. for a “cultural exchange.”

After leaving the island, I looked deeper into this. What I discovered is that Mackinac Island is a case study in how the U.S. outsources jobs to a rotating cast of temporary foreign hires. Employers rely on both H-2B visa holders—seasonal workers brought in for jobs supposedly “Americans won’t do”—and J-1 visa students, who are nominally here to learn but mostly come to work.

Something similar might have been going on at Wisconsin Dells long ago, and that despite Wisconsin law mandating that public instruction, including at the universities, cannot start before Labor Day (unlike Northern Illinois University, where the fourth Monday in August, which can come as early as the 22^nd, is the first day of classes.)

Mr Gould suggests that on Mackinac, the resort operators are collecting a lawful cheap labor subsidy.

Americans who can afford to wait for better opportunities won’t settle for jobs that don’t pay a living wage, especially not on an island where the cost of living is significantly higher than in mainland Michigan—or most of the country, for that matter.

I spoke with one of the rare American students holding a summer job on the island—a University of Michigan undergrad working the register at a gift shop. The student earns $15 an hour. Though seasonal housing is provided, the student said any money saved quickly disappears once the season ends. (Adjusted for inflation, a minimum-wage worker from the 1970s had far more purchasing power—some estimates suggest today’s equivalent would be $24 to $40 an hour). Meanwhile, for workers from abroad, that same job could be a financial windfall.

Reports indicate that most seasonal roles on Mackinac Island pay between $15 and $25 per hour. Even at the low end, that wage goes a long way in a lower-cost economy. For many foreign workers, one summer’s earnings in the U.S. can fund an entire year back home.

Consider the Jamaican family mentioned in Callewaert’s op-ed. If a family member earns $15 an hour for a standard 40-hour workweek over a typical season, they’ll gross around $15,600. After Michigan and federal taxes—about 17.5 percent—their take-home pay comes to roughly $12,870. In Jamaica, where living comfortably would costs between $1,000 and $3,000 per month, that’s enough to place the family in one of the country’s higher income brackets. This doesn’t even account for the fact that many workers can secure jobs back home, allowing them to retain a significant portion of their U.S. earnings. Some workers also send a portion of their income abroad while they are still residing in the United States. A young woman I spoke with at a clothing store on the island said she remits most of her paycheck to support family members in Latin America.

It’s frustrating to watch the U.S. treated like an itinerant piggy bank—dollars earned here, spent elsewhere, with little reinvestment in the communities that provide these people an income. But even more frustrating is that this setup exists by design, enabled by employers who cut costs by cutting Americans out.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the J-1 visa program, which disguises labor importation under the guise of “cultural exchange” for international students. International students come to America for cultural exchange, but often find themselves caught in a web of economic exploitation. Marketed as a way to broaden horizons, the J-1 program brings over 130,000 students/workers to the U.S. each year, many of whom pay thousands in fees to sponsoring agencies and overseas recruiters.

It's unusual to find an essayist in woke-skeptical Minding the Campus citing the Southern Poverty Law Center, and yet, there it is.

To be clear, I can’t say definitively whether the J-1 students I met on Mackinac Island are being exploited. They may well be in the same position as others—earning American wages with far greater spending power back home. But on the island, they fill hotel, restaurant, and retail jobs, and one site, Mackinac.jobs, openly recruits J-1 students by selling the island’s charm. But Mackinac isn’t one of America’s cultural capitals. It’s not New York, Chicago, or any other major U.S. city. It’s a remote tourist hub in the middle of Lake Huron. What real exchange is happening here?

For employers, presumably ones like Callewaert, J-1s are a dream: no payroll taxes, no union threats, and a guaranteed seasonal exit. That’s an automatic eight percent savings on every hire, at least according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. And broadly speaking, for the students, the “exchange” often means debt, overcrowded housing, and long hours with hidden fees for rent, uniforms, or transport. It has also been reported that some make less than minimum wage, and that some need a second job just to stay afloat.

The program was designed to build international goodwill, but it’s actually a conveyor belt of cheap, exploitable labor facilitated by unaccountable recruiters abroad, sanctioned by the State Department, and embraced by American businesses.

For now, he fears that what will follow will not be amusing.

Mackinac’s nostalgia hides a labor system that bypasses American workers under the guise of diplomacy, diversity, “Americans won’t work,” and cultural exchange. This isn’t about blaming foreign students or guest workers, but rather critiquing a system shaped by employers, policymakers, and educational institutions that steadily erodes opportunities for Americans. Mackinac Island exemplifies the labor market that many recent graduates will face nationwide—one where domestic opportunities are sacrificed to cost-cutting and outsourcing.

The longer we ignore this rigged system, the more young Americans will be left wondering why their own country no longer seems to have a place for them—and when that question takes hold, many troubling consequences follow.

Is Our President making a play for the student vote by calling attention first to illegal immigration, with measures to call for domestic content in hiring to follow?