At a time when fewer young Americans are finding work, hundreds of thousands of foreign students have taken jobs through a controversial U.S. visa program.
The Summer Work Travel program has grown into a $100 million international industry, providing temporary jobs at venues ranging from Alaskan fisheries to Florida theme parks.
Touted as a "cultural exchange," there's a dark side to SWT and its J-1 visa program, which, at times, looks more like a human-trafficking operation for cheap labor.
Young women have been dragooned into strip clubs, despite State Department regulations that expressly prohibit that kind of work, and some students complain of sexual abuse or physical neglect at the hands of their employers.
ZM Studios, a broker for topless dancers, brazenly advertised on its website: "If you wish to dance in USA as a J-1 exchange visitor, contact us." The ad said ZM Studios is "affiliated with designated visa sponsors" and can get women J-1 visas and jobs at topless clubs in cities like Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
In Florida, a 19-year-old Russian told the Associated Press she went to work as a cocktail waitress at a topless bar in Fort Walton Beach because the souvenir shop where she worked didn't pay much and the shop owner had her living in a crowded, rundown apartment.
Elsewhere, exchange student Munkh-Erdene Battur said he and four other Mongolian nationals were fired from their fast-food jobs in Riverton, Wyo., after complaining about being forced to pay $350 apiece per month to live in a converted garage.
"In my whole life, I've never lived in that kind of place and that kind of conditions," Battur told the AP.
A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies says the rapid growth of SWT over the past 15 years illustrates a troubling trend in the nations immigration system, "where new programs are created and allowed to expand significantly without giving careful consideration to their impact on the labor market or the larger American society."
"There's been a massive failure on the part of the United States to bring any accountability to the temporary work visa programs, and it's especially true for the J-1," agrees Terry Coonan, a former prosecutor and the executive director of Florida State University's Center for the Advancement of Human Rights.
The CIS report, "Cheap Labor as Cultural Exchange," found that the foreign-student work program:
- Displaces young Americans from the workplace at a time of record levels of youth unemployment.
- Provides incentives for employers to bypass American workers by exempting SWT employers from taxes that apply to employment of Americans. Employers also dont have to worry about providing health insurance, since SWT students are required to buy it for themselves.
- Puts downward pressure on wages because it gives employers access to workers from poor countries who are eager to come to the United States, not just to earn money but also to travel within the country and burnish their resumes by learning English.
Because J-1 visa holders pay an average of about $1,100 in fees to private brokers that serve as SWT sponsors, the program generates well over $100 million in annual revenues for those organizations, CIS estimates. Students pay many millions more in visa fees to the State Department and in travel expenses to and from the United States.
"Many [J-1 visa holders] are virtually indentured to U.S. employers and are therefore unable to challenge low pay and poor working and housing conditions," report author Jerry Kammer said.
Last year, 103,000 foreign students obtained J-1 visas to work in the United States. At the same time, the total number of U.S. youths aged 16-24 not working hit a record high of 18.5 million this summer, an increase of 7.2 million since 2000.
The underemployment of young, college-age workers predates the current economic downturn.
The share of older youths -- ages 20-24 -- holding a summer job declined from 75 percent in 2000, to 71 percent in 2007, to 63 percent in 2011, according to government reports.
The percentage of youths ages 16-24 enrolled in school holding a summer job declined from 48 percent in 2000 to 33 percent in 2011.
Kammer argues that SWT "is not truly an exchange program because it lacks reciprocity since a negligible number of young Americans find overseas employment through the SWT sponsoring agencies.
"In fact, it has become a gateway for illegal immigration by SWT participants who overstay their visas."
The State Department even acknowledges that its J-1 visas have been exploited by criminals. A 2009 cable, for example, noted an ongoing investigation of a Eurasian Organized Crime group operating in Colorado and Nevada that is suspected of using 28 Summer Work and Travel exchange program students to participate in financial fraud schemes.
And still the beat goes on.
The sky is really the limit, gushes the website of a Singapore travel agency that promotes SWT through its affiliation with U.S. organizations designated by the State Department to sponsor SWT participants. The website declares that there are thousands of cities and towns throughout America that can offer you a totally unique Work and Travel USA experience.
Last month, Stanley Colvin, the State Department official who long directed SWT and other exchange programs, was quietly pushed out of his job.
Rick Ruth, Colvin's replacement, said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "directed the State Department to conduct a thorough and rigorous review of the Summer Work Travel program and make recommendations" aimed at ensuring that the program "fulfills its original purpose as a cultural program for foreign college and university students."
Ruth announced that the number of SWT participants for 2012 would be frozen at its 2011 level of 103,000.
That move, he said, would facilitate a review aimed at "determining how to best move forward, via program reforms and new administrative procedures."
This is an opinion column: Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
