Mystic — During tourism season, Angela Kanabis needs up to 150 full- and part-time employees to keep things humming at Red 36, her seafood restaurant on the Mystic River, where the seating capacity doubles in the summer.

This year, foreign college students will account for more than a fifth of that number, all of them living in a former Mystic motel owned by a competing restaurateur.

Hailing from Colombia, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, Turkey and other countries, the students, participants in the U.S. Department of State’s J-1 visa program, began arriving last month. Kanabis said she’s been picking up one or two students a day this week at the Mystic train station, with more than two-dozen of them now working at Red 36.

Nearly 40 students are expected here by summer’s end, with some scheduled to stay until mid-October.

Working with Spirit Cultural Exchange, an Oak Park, Ill.-based organization designated as a sponsor of the J-1 summer work travel program, Kanabis watched videotaped interviews with candidates before deciding whether to offer them jobs. She also had the option to personally interview students via Zoom.

“We started the process kind of late, in March, so we decided to go with the Spirit interviews,” she said. “We could see how they (candidates) conducted themselves and how good their English was. They could accept or decline a job offer; once hired, they could apply for their visa.”

The program specifies that students may work in the United States for three months and can remain in the country for an additional month to travel — either before starting or after finishing their employment. Students obtain a Social Security number and must pay state and federal income taxes on their earnings but are exempt from withholding taxes for Medicare and Social Security insurance.

Host employers must show that they are not using holders of J-1 visas to fill positions that could be filled by available U.S. workers.

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Sebastian Giraldo, 24, who is pursuing a master’s degree at the Escuela Colombiana de Ingenieria (Colombia School of Engineering) in his native Bogota, Colombia, arrived in Mystic on May 8 and started working as a food runner at Red 36 the next day.

Giraldo had visited the U.S. on a J-1 visa on three previous occasions, spending the summers of 2018, 2019 and 2021 working at a restaurant/event center in Salisbury, a coastal tourist destination in northeastern Massachusetts. COVID-19 restrictions in Colombia prevented him from traveling in 2020.

In Salisbury, he met his girlfriend, Grace Mclellan, who has joined him in Mystic, also landing a job at Red 36.

Given Giraldo's experience, the restaurant has advanced him to server, which requires some facility with the language.

"I have to know, What is garlic? What is basil?" he said. "We learn English, not about a kitchen."

Giraldo said minimum wage in Colombia is $220 a month.

“Here, you work two or three days to make one month’s worth of money,” he said.

The students are looking for as many hours of work as they can get. Some have been hired at other businesses in addition to Red 36, Kanabis said, including Dunkin' Donuts, Domino's and Mango's, an Olde Mistick Village restaurant.

They're living in a former motel on Greenmanville Avenue/Route 27 that Mystic restaurateur Bill Middleton acquired last year and plans to turn into an upscale motel. Originally the Old Mystic Motor Lodge, the property also had incarnations as an EconoLodge and as a Rodeway Inn.

Middleton, who owns the Jealous Monk, Rio Salado and Taquerio restaurants in Mystic, also acquired the former Friendly’s restaurant next to the former motel and intends to open an Italian restaurant there later this year.

“I was approached about using it as employee housing for the summer,” Middleton said of the motel property. “Employers that have used the J-1 program can find themselves between a rock and a hard place. It’s not just an employee shortage. It’s difficult to find housing for employees once they get here.”

He said he has relied on J-1 visa students in the past and found them to be “great, hardworking employees.”

“Bill saved the day” by providing the J-1 visa students with reasonably priced housing that’s within walking distance of their jobs, Kanabis said, referring to Middleton. Also close by are the Mystic Diner restaurant, a 24-hour convenience store and McQuade’s Marketplace grocery store, she said.

“We come here to save money,” said Giraldo, who was “shocked” at the price of housing options in the area.

He and his girlfriend, who has a car, have driven students to a Walmart store to buy necessities and have led excursions in search of entertainment. Recent destinations have included Foxwoods Resort Casino and Ocean Beach in New London.

For the students, getting to know one another and sharing stories about their life experiences and their religions “just opens your mind,” Giraldo said. “How big the world is.”

b.hallenbeck@theday.com