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
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...