The flashy websites, flyers and sales pitches are often difficult for students to resist.

Recruiters promise the opportunity of a lifetime to students overseas — a chance to live and work in the United States for several months while learning about American culture and improving their English. They promise good wages and show photos of attractive jobsites and housing.

It’s all part of a pitch that sells a specific experience. After hearing it, many students reach the same conclusion: Working in the United States is an investment in a better future, one that is worth paying hundreds or thousands of dollars in recruiter fees and other costs.

Recruiters, of course, have a financial incentive to make the jobs seem as attractive as possible. Sponsors and recruiters claim that the fees they charge cover the cost of administering the program, but it is clear they are reaping a windfall. A 2010 investigation by The Associated Press found that the Summer Work Travel (SWT) program generates millions of dollars in revenue for sponsors and recruiters.

The fees that foreign recruiters and sponsors charge students are completely unregulated, and J-1 students often borrow money to pay them. In Jamaica, for example, where the minimum wage is $49.20 for a 40-hour week, or $1.23 an hour, students reported to the SPLC that it is not unusual for their parents to remain mired in debt after paying $2,000 in recruitment and placement fees. As in other guest worker programs for low-skill workers, this debt leaves students extremely vulnerable to exploitation and even human trafficking.

Too often, the experiences these students encounter do not resemble the pictures on the glossy brochures and websites. Many discover, after they have invested in the program, that their U.S. employer and sponsor care largely about cheap labor and feel little obligation to live up to the promises that were made.



Instead of exploring American cities and tourist destinations, J-1 workers have reported cultural exchange experiences dominated by work.

These students often report feeling deceived about their job, their housing, their earnings and the cultural exchange opportunities. As Katerina, a J-1 student from Bulgaria, said, “Back home they don’t tell you that you’ll have to get a second job because you won’t be able to afford to live on just one.”

Students interviewed by the SPLC also said recruiters charged exorbitant fees, forced them to sign fraudulent contracts, ignored complaints or even retaliated against them when they lodged complaints about their sponsors or employers.

The State Department, which oversees the program, acknowledges that misleading information in the recruitment process can be a problem because “the foreign entities’ initial outreach to the potential program participants sets the stage for participants’ expectation about the Summer Work Travel Program.” Nevertheless, the government does not regulate recruiters, and abuse and fraud continue to flourish as a result. Given that there are nearly 1,000 international recruiters involved in the SWT program, this lack of regulation is extremely problematic.

‘Essentially work programs’

The cultural exchange goals of the program are routinely overshadowed by the program’s work component. Students reported to the SPLC that sponsors frequently placed them in low-wage jobs with little or no opportunity for cultural interaction and failed to offer opportunities for cultural exchange during non-work hours as the regulations require.

“When I signed up for the J-1 program, I had the impression it would be a cultural exchange with people from other countries where I would meet people and practice my English, but that wasn’t the case,” said Christian, a J-1 student from Peru who cleaned hotel rooms at a Mississippi casino resort.

The State Department requires sponsors to place participants in jobs that have a cultural exchange component — jobs that “have opportunities to work alongside U.S. citizens and interact regularly with U.S. citizens to experience U.S. culture during the workday portion of their Summer Work Travel programs.”

The regulations also lay out a number of jobs that are barred for participants, including jobs that are not seasonal or that require a substantial amount of work on the graveyard shift (10 p.m. to 6 a.m.), when opportunities for cultural interactions would be minimized. The department expanded the list of prohibited jobs in 2012 to ensure participant safety and access to cultural exchange.

But the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) noted in a 2012 report that the department has failed to seriously enforce the program’s cultural exchange component. The report recommended either discontinuing the program altogether or changing the designation of these visas so they are no longer considered to offer cultural exchange opportunities.

“The OIG team questions the appropriateness of allowing what are essentially work programs to masquerade as cultural exchange activities,” the report noted.

Volodymyr Gasii, an engineering student from the Ukraine who participated in the SWT program in summer 2013, learned this firsthand. He worked as a food preparer at two restaurants in Gulf Shores, Ala., sometimes as many as 84 hours per week just to sustain himself. He had little time to seek out the cultural experience he was promised.

Workers and advocates also have exposed the program’s cultural exchange goals as a pretext.

In 2011, J-1 workers at a Pennsylvania plant that packed Hershey’s chocolates organized with the National Guestworker Alliance (NGA) and went on strike to protest work conditions. “The work is very hard there, and we couldn’t do anything else after — maybe take a shower, eat something and go to sleep, that’s it. It was terrible,” Cosmin Isvoranu, a mechanical engineering student from Romania, told Public Radio International.

Two years later, J-1 workers at a McDonald’s in Harrisburg, Pa., joined with the NGA and protested their work conditions. “All the days it was double shift, double shift,” said Fernando Acosta of Paraguay, whose workday often began at 7 a.m. and didn’t end until 11 p.m.

Complaints to sponsors may fall on deaf ears

A key problem with the J-1 program is that the State Department relies on sponsors to monitor recruiters and employers for violations of the program’s regulations.

The State Department claims it only has the authority to sanction sponsors, not employers, for program violations. Even when an employer fails to pay students the minimum wage, it is the sponsor — and only the sponsor — that the State Department says it can hold accountable.

This approach all but guarantees limited oversight. Sponsors’ revenue largely depends on their ability to collect fees from students for placing them with employers. Sponsors build relationships with employers to ensure they have jobs for their fee-paying J-1 participants. Therefore, it is unlikely that the sponsor will jeopardize its business relationship with the employers and open itself to sanctions by reporting employer misconduct.

Students reported to the SPLC that their sponsors often were unresponsive to complaints about workplace problems and program violations. Students also described incidents of sponsors creating roadblocks when they attempted to change jobs.

When Shevaughn Davis, a student from Jamaica who was barely sustaining herself cleaning 22 hotel rooms a day for $8 per hour with no cultural interaction, asked her sponsor to transfer her to a new job, the sponsor refused. Program regulations only allow students to work for employers that are approved by the sponsor.

If the sponsor is reluctant to make waves with the current employer, it may not permit the student to transfer to a new job. This dynamic effectively prevents students from leaving abusive employers.



Shevaughn Davis paid more than $2,000 to come from Jamaica for the opportunity to work at a resort in Myrtle Beach, S.C. She barely earned enough to pay for basic necessities, and her sponsor refused her request to change jobs.

The sponsor oversight model also discourages sponsors from breaking ties with a misleading recruiter when that recruiter is continuously supplying it with fee-paying students. This is especially problematic because, even though sponsors are required to look after the student, many students reported to the SPLC that they turn to their recruiter — not their sponsor — as the first point of contact when problems arise. According to the students, it is not unusual for recruiters to provide students with bad advice or completely ignore their complaints. The students’ reliance on their recruiter to address problems is more evidence that recruiters need to be regulated.

The overall lack of oversight within the J-1 program is one reason many students return to their countries with stories for their family and friends of broken promises, debt and exploitation that benefited only the bottom line of sponsors and employers.

Inadequate oversight

Even when students report sponsors or employers to the State Department, there is little hope the department will address their concerns.

The majority of SWT students interviewed for this report said that when they called the department’s hotline to complain about their sponsor they received either an inadequate response or no response at all. This is consistent with the experience of the SPLC and other advocates who have submitted formal complaints on behalf of students to the department.

While the State Department’s enforcement actions against sponsors have increased in recent months, they are overall still infrequent and many of the sponsors sanctioned received the mildest sanction available — a letter of reprimand and a “corrective action plan.”

Given these actions, the department is not wielding much of a “stick” to ensure sponsors comply with the program regulations.

Since 1990, the Government Accountability Office and the State Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) have expressed concerns over the State Department’s inadequate oversight of the J-1 program.

These reports found the department’s overreliance on sponsor disclosures, inadequate staffing and resources, and lack of on-site reviews of sponsors to be critical failures in its enforcement strategy.

A 2012 report by the OIG charged that the department struggles to provide adequate oversight of sponsors.

The report was issued after the department apparently strengthened its enforcement of SWT sponsors’ compliance by conducting additional on-site reviews and issuing tighter regulations in 2011.

Because the department claims it has no jurisdiction over employers, J-1 workers whose workplace rights have been violated are forced to turn to another federal agency, such as the Department of Labor, or they must hire a private lawyer to find meaningful relief. J-1 exchange visitors are not eligible for federally funded legal services, and they often lack the resources to hire private counsel. Lawyers also are reluctant to take cases involving international litigation, especially when such cases involve claims that might not be as lucrative given the short amount of time the students work in the United States.

Without an effective way to enforce the few worker protections the program regulations offer, companies will continue to use the J-1 program as a source of cheap labor even if the State Department takes steps to re-establish it as a cultural exchange program.

U.S. workers have few protections when employers hire J-1s

The J-1 program regulations offer few protections to U.S. workers. Unlike other guest worker programs, employers are not required to recruit U.S. workers before hiring J-1 workers, and they are not required to pay the J-1 workers a wage that the government has determined will not drive down the wages of U.S. workers — a “prevailing wage.”

“This program is a scam. It is not a cultural-exchange program,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said during the immigration debate in 2013. “It is displacing young American workers at a time of double-digit unemployment among young people, and it is putting downward pressure on wages at a time when the American people are working longer hours for lower wages.”

The regulations require sponsors to ensure that host employers pay at least the applicable minimum wage or the wages and benefits offered to their U.S. counterparts, whichever is higher.

But, unlike other guest worker programs, they do not have to pay a wage that is certified by the Department of Labor to protect the wages of U.S. workers. It is left to the sponsor and the employer, which is likely hoping to pay the lowest wage possible, to determine a wage equal to that of a U.S. worker.



The J-1 program is regulated by the State Department, which claims no authority to cite employers or recruiters for deceptive practices or other abuses.

The State Department also leaves it up to the sponsor to determine whether employers are displacing U.S. workers by using the J-1 program. Sponsors do not have the expertise to fulfill this duty, and they only have to assess whether U.S. workers are being displaced “at the beginning of each placement season.”

There’s no requirement for sponsors to follow up on how U.S. workers are being affected.

In other guest worker programs, the Department of Labor has the authority to enforce key labor market regulations such as wages and the displacement of U.S. workers.