US orders review of student work visa program

HOLBROOK MOHR

Asso­ci­ated Press

JACKSON, Mis­sis­sippi — U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton has ordered an “exten­sive and thor­ough review” of a for­eign exchange pro­gram that has been used by U.S. busi­nesses as a source of cheap labor and exploited by crim­i­nals to import women to work in the sex industry.

In the lat­est deba­cle for the J-1 Sum­mer Work Travel visa, a fed­eral indict­ment unsealed last week accuses the mafia of using the cul­tural exchange pro­gram to bring East­ern Euro­pean women to work in New York strip clubs.

The U.S. House Judi­ciary Committee’s immi­gra­tion sub­com­mit­tee also has been gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion on the J-1 visa, which was cre­ated in 1963 to allow col­lege stu­dents from other coun­tries to spend their sum­mer breaks liv­ing, work­ing and trav­el­ing in the U.S.

As the pro­gram has grown to bring more than 100,000 young peo­ple here annu­ally, it has become as much about money as cul­tural understanding.

The State Depart­ment has made sev­eral changes since an Asso­ci­ated Press inves­ti­ga­tion last year uncov­ered wide­spread abuses, includ­ing liv­ing and work­ing con­di­tions that some par­tic­i­pants com­pared to inden­tured servitude.

In one of the worst cases, a woman told the AP she was beaten, raped and forced to work as a strip­per in Detroit after being promised a job as a wait­ress in Virginia.

More com­mon than sex trade abuses is shabby hous­ing, scarce work hours and pal­try pay. In August, dozens of work­ers protested con­di­tions at a candy fac­tory that packs Her­shey choco­lates in Her­shey, Penn­syl­va­nia, com­plain­ing of hard phys­i­cal labor and pay deduc­tions for rent that often left them with lit­tle money.

A State Depart­ment spokesman, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity, said Clin­ton “has called for an exten­sive and thor­ough review of the program.”

“We con­tinue to be com­mit­ted to work­ing to strengthen the Sum­mer Work Travel Pro­gram to safe­guard the health and wel­fare of the par­tic­i­pants,” the offi­cial said in an email late Fri­day. “We have already insti­tuted one set of reforms and are work­ing toward addi­tional ones that take addi­tional mea­sures to pro­tect par­tic­i­pants and pri­or­i­tize the orig­i­nal cul­tural intent of the program.”

The New York case was made pub­lic just days after the State Depart­ment opened a period of pub­lic com­ment on pro­posed changes that would require com­pa­nies that spon­sor the par­tic­i­pants to gather more infor­ma­tion about employ­ment and liv­ing arrangements.

It’s not clear if the pro­posed changes would have pre­vented the sit­u­a­tion in New York, in which author­i­ties say fraud­u­lent offers for jobs as wait­resses were used to help East­ern Euro­pean women get visas to come to the U.S. Instead of work­ing in restau­rants, they allegedly danced in strip clubs. Author­i­ties say mem­bers of Gam­bino and Bon­nano mafia fam­i­lies were involved.

The reforms being con­sid­ered by the State Depart­ment would limit and refine the types of jobs stu­dents can have, expand the list of pro­hib­ited employ­ment cat­e­gories, and strengthen the “the cul­tural aspects of the pro­gram to ensure that the objec­tive of the pro­gram — pos­i­tive expo­sure to the United States — is accomplished.”

The agency already pro­hibits par­tic­i­pants from tak­ing jobs “that might bring the Depart­ment of State into noto­ri­ety or dis­re­pute” but the AP found that strip clubs and adult enter­tain­ment com­pa­nies openly solicited J-1 workers.

Most of the abuses in the J-1 pro­gram over the years have been blamed on unreg­u­lated, third-party labor bro­kers who work with the stu­dents. Crit­ics say the stu­dents have got­ten lit­tle help from com­pa­nies des­ig­nated as spon­sors by the State Department.

The State Depart­ment said in Novem­ber that it has tem­porar­ily stopped accept­ing any new spon­sors and will limit the num­ber of future par­tic­i­pants to this year’s level, or about 103,000 stu­dents. The State Depart­ment also revised its rules to require more over­sight by its 53 des­ig­nated spon­sors, which help stu­dents arrange for visas and find jobs and hous­ing in return for a fee.

“For­eign exchange stu­dent abuse con­tin­ues due to lack of over­sight by State and the unadul­ter­ated greed of the exchange spon­sors,” accord­ing to Danielle Gri­jalva, direc­tor of the Com­mit­tee for Safety of For­eign Exchange Stu­dents, an advo­cacy group. Gri­jalva called on the State Depart­ment to enact a strict mora­to­rium and impose sanc­tions for spon­sors who fail to main­tain the integrity of the program.

Under the J-1 pro­gram, for­eign stu­dents are granted visas for up to four months and often land jobs at hotels, resorts and restaurants.

Par­tic­i­pa­tion has boomed from about 20,000 stu­dents in 1996 to a peak of more than 150,000 in 2008, and roughly 1 mil­lion for­eign stu­dents have taken part in the past decade. The stu­dents come from around the world, with some of the top par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries being Rus­sia, Brazil, Ukraine, Thai­land, Ire­land, Bul­garia, Peru, Moldova and Poland.

Posted by AP News on Dec 5 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.