golden ticket
n.— «Their story highlights the troubles facing both foreign workers and island employers utilizing seasonal H-2B visas, which workers often refer to as “golden tickets” but require strict commitments long before it is always clear whether jobs will even need to be filled.» —“Bulgarian students stranded without jobs or housing” by Margaret Carroll-Bergman Inquirer and Mirror (Nantucket, Massachusetts) June 29, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
If you speak a second or third language, you may remember the first time you dreamed in that new tongue. But does this milestone mean you’re actually fluent? And a couple’s dispute over the word regret: Say you wish you’d been able...
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...