Summer camp operators faced multiple business challenges throughout the pandemic. Try to open or shut down entirely? Reduce enrollment or switch to online programming?

But beyond those kinds of decisions, a less visible pandemic-related issue greatly affected camp staffing. Many camps, particularly the more remote, rural overnight camp programs, rely heavily on international student workers on J1 “exchange visitor” visas.

During the pandemic, with international travel deeply curtailed, most of those exchange programs were canceled as well.

“One of the vulnerabilities of camping that got exposed during the pandemic is when all of the international camp counselor and support service programs got shut down,” says Jeff Merhige, executive director of the Joe C. Davis YMCA Outdoor Center and Camp Widjiwagan. “Nationally, there were camps that ... 50 to 75% of their staffing was international counselors.”

J-class exchange visitor visas are nonimmigrant visas for individuals approved to participate in exchange visitor programs in the United States. In addition to camp counselors, they are commonly given to au pair child care workers, teachers and students, and people participating in internship programs.

“Camps would bring a lot of folks from around the world because it adds to the experience for kids to meet people from around the world and get exposed to different cultures,” Merhige says. “Normally those were through sponsoring agencies that allowed processing of their visas, and then you would pay them a stipend.

“When the pandemic hit, 73 percent of camps in the country, up to 80 percent, shut down,” Merhige says. “Those of us that ran through the pandemic right away saw (we were) going to have to be more competitive with American labor. And so as we’re coming out of the pandemic, what people learned was if you were relying on international labor or seasonal labor or stipend labor, you have to be more competitive” with compensation.

Merhige says that Nashville-area camps didn’t feel that particular labor pinch as intensely as more rural overnight programs did, but it did have an impact locally.

“Usually that’s what you find in your rural camps really far from any civilization,” he says of the international staffing program. “They’re like, ‘OK, it’s way easier to bring in internationals than it is to recruit.’ In our case, it’s never been the majority of our staffing, and when we lost it we adapted. But now we’re excited for it to come back because it just adds to the program for the kids to meet people from around the world.”

Merhige anticipates that out of a summer staff of 200, seven or eight people this camp season will be international workers. Approximately 60% of Camp Widjiwagan’s counselors are hired from Middle Tennessee and contiguous states, with another 15-20% being college students from other parts of the country.