Culture Shock: The Exploitation of J-1 Cultural Exchange Workers

They come to experience all America has to offer.

They hope to pay their way by working a summer job as they experience a new culture and learn English. They work in our hotels, restaurants, fast-food chains and amusement parks. They work for companies with names synonymous with the United States: McDonald’s, Disney, Hilton and more.

They’re J-1 guest workers.

J-1 workers are promised the opportunity to experience American culture. Too often, they are exploited for cheap labor.

Many of them are college students participating in the J-1 visa Summer Work Travel Program. Others come here to train in their career field as part of the J-1 Trainee and Intern Program. Together, these two J-1 visa categories account for more than 130,000 foreign workers arriving in the U.S. each year to work full-time as part of the wider J-1 Visa Exchange Visitor Program.

Congress created the program more than 50 years ago “to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries by means of educational and cultural exchange.” Foreign youths pay American job placement agencies designated by the Department of State — called “sponsors” — to be placed with U.S. employers in jobs that offer cultural exchange opportunities and, for trainees and interns, professional job training.

But the workers in the Summer Work Travel and the Intern and Trainee programs often discover that the promise of “cultural exchange” is an empty one.

Employers are using the program to fill labor needs, transforming a program designed to foster international goodwill into a source of cheap, exploitable labor. For the employers, the program offers a way to cut labor costs. Employers do not have to pay payroll taxes for J-1 workers. The savings an employer can realize by not paying an employee’s Medicare, Social Security or federal unemployment tax — around 8 percent on its total payroll expenses — have led staffing agencies to promote the program as an inexpensive labor force.

The sponsors and their overseas partners — the groups that recruit and screen participants — also are reaping a windfall by charging J-1 workers hundreds or even thousands of dollars in fees to participate in the program. These fees are completely unregulated, and students and their families often fall into debt to pay them and other travel expenses. This recruitment debt leaves students vulnerable to exploitation. Faced with pressure to pay off loans, students and interns may opt to endure workplace abuse until they can return home.

J-1 workers often discover the cultural experience they invested in does not exist. They are frequently placed in low-paying jobs with little or no opportunity for cultural exchange. Students told the SPLC that their experience is dominated by work without the opportunity to enjoy American culture. This is true even after the State Department, which oversees the program, began requiring sponsors in 2012 to place J-1 students in jobs that ensure they have cultural exchange opportunities on and off the job. From students’ experiences, it’s clear this cultural exchange requirement too often exists only on paper.

When these workers aren’t on the job, they are often forced to live in overcrowded housing with other J-1 workers. They are frequently paid less than the minimum wage after their employer makes excessive deductions for housing, uniforms, transportation and other expenses. Some J-1 workers discover they must work a second job just to survive.

But this is more than a story of debt and disappointment. It has put some young students at risk of human trafficking and other nefarious activity. The State Department’s 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report noted that vulnerabilities in the J-1 program can “potentially facilitate human trafficking.”

When these workers complain or try to stand up for their rights, they find few places to turn. The State Department claims it has no authority to sanction employers and typically does little to help workers with employment-related issues. J-1 workers cannot access federally funded legal services to help them address workplace violations. And few private lawyers are willing to take a complicated case that involves internationally recruited workers.

U.S. workers also suffer from the program’s weak regulation. Employers aren’t required to recruit U.S. workers before hiring J-1 workers. There are no meaningful regulations that prevent employers from paying J-1 workers a wage that undercuts U.S. worker wages. This lack of protection is particularly harmful to young U.S. workers who are facing high youth unemployment rates.

It should be no surprise that efforts to reform this program have been met with stiff opposition by those profiting from it. When the U.S. Senate passed anti-trafficking provisions to regulate overseas recruiters in 2013 — including a ban on recruitment fees charged to workers seeking temporary work visas — J-1 sponsors and employers persuaded lawmakers to carve out an exception for the J-1 visa.

This report is based on hundreds of interviews with J-1 Summer Work Travel participants and interns and trainees working across the South, primarily in the hospitality industry. These interviews revealed that regardless of the worker’s country of origin or whether they participated in the Summer Work Travel Program or the Trainee and Intern Program, the experience is the same. The undeniable conclusion is that these J-1 programs, an initiative once envisioned as a tool of diplomacy, has become little more than a source of cheap labor for employers.

Based on the SPLC’s investigation, it is clear, in fact, that the program suffers from the same flaws as other guest worker programs. The SPLC has represented thousands of guest workers in lawsuits to protect them from wage theft, discrimination, illegal recruitment practices and other abuses. As evidenced by these lawsuits, temporary foreign workers are extremely vulnerable to recruitment and workplace abuse.

The J-1 program, however, is much larger than the nation’s other major low-wage guest worker program — the H-2 temporary worker program. But the J-1 program lacks many of that program’s worker protections. Perhaps more troubling is that the U.S. government and its sponsors globally advertise the J-1 program as a cultural exchange — not a temporary work program — even though that is clearly what the Summer Work Travel and the Trainee and Intern categories have become.

Without true reform, our nation will continue to send disillusioned young people home every year with stories about U.S. employers and their insatiable appetite for cheap, exploitable labor.

“I would never have come had I known the job was going to be so bad,” said Joom, a Thai student who spent almost all of her “cultural exchange” scrambling to clean 20 hotel rooms a day in Louisiana. “Housekeeping is hard work — my body hurt. This was not the cultural experience that we paid for.”

Our nation can no longer continue to break its promise with foreign workers such as Joom. The J-1 program must return to its original mission of cultural exchange. It also must have mechanisms in place to protect young U.S. workers in the job market. Recommendations for reform are offered at the end of this report.

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.

More than 30,000 students participate in the J-1 Trainee and Intern Program each year.39 Through this program, college students, graduates and others can receive 12 to 18 months of work and training experience in the United States.

Unlike the J-1 Summer Work Travel Program, these workers cannot be placed in jobs that only require “unskilled or casual labor.” They must be placed in jobs that will provide structured training to “enhance the skills and expertise of exchange visitors in their academic or occupational fields.”

This program also has a cultural exchange goal of increasing the participants’ understanding of American culture and society, an experience that will allow them to “share their experiences with their countrymen.”

Unfortunately, many of these workers share stories of deceit at the hands of recruiters and sponsors after discovering they will be performing menial, unskilled labor for the duration of their internships in the United States.

“If the program had stayed true to its original purpose, I have no doubt it would have benefited all of us. But I didn’t have to come to the U.S. to learn how to make beds,” said Huong Tran, a J-1 trainee from Vietnam. “I could have done that at home and not borrowed thousands of dollars from my family.”

As in the Summer Work Travel Program, these workers are typically recruited by overseas agencies that connect them with U.S. sponsors. Participants often pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in fees to the sponsors and recruiters to cover registration and other program costs. They also must pay their own travel costs.

Before departing to the United States, interns and trainees receive a Training/Internship Placement Plan. It includes the work location and training strategy, which often involves rotating the worker through various departments. The plan details the skills that workers will acquire in each rotation and how much they will be paid. It is signed by the employer, sponsor and participant.

Many interns and trainees expect this plan to serve as a contract guaranteeing their training experience, and they rely on it when they invest thousands of dollars to make the trip to the United States. Part of the plan’s purpose is to distinguish between bona fide training programs and casual work.

There are a number of positions the State Department classifies as unskilled or casual labor, including hotel and motel cleaners, janitors and dining room attendants, that should not be included in a J-1 intern or trainee’s work.

Unfortunately, J-1 workers in the Intern and Trainee Program report being placed in prohibited jobs, such as maids or busboys, for the duration of their internship. Even worse, worker complaints about program violations have been met with threats of deportation or other forms of retaliation from sponsors and recruiters.

The State Department problematically relies on sponsors to ensure employers comply with the program regulations. Sponsors are even responsible for ensuring employers actually provide a training experience.

The State Department can sanction the sponsors for placing workers in unsuitable jobs, but sanctions are infrequent and the majority of the sponsors sanctioned in the past seven years received the weakest sanction available — a letter of reprimand.

The program’s weak regulation comes at the expense of not only the foreign interns and trainees but U.S. workers as well. Although sponsors are required to certify that neither they nor any host employer will displace American workers, it is unclear how this certification is evaluated for compliance by the State Department, if it is evaluated at all.

Lhan Kassemwattan came from Thailand in 2011 on a J-1 visa to work at a hotel in Orlando, Fla., for a year.

She applied to the J-1 Intern and Trainee Program because it promised to provide training and a certificate in hospitality management — a potential boon to her career. She also looked forward to the opportunity to improve her English.

Lhan paid the Thai recruiters and the U.S. sponsor $8,000 to get the job — more than one year’s salary in Thailand. She borrowed the money from her mother, believing that she would be able to pay it back. After all, the recruiter said she would make $1,000 each month.

After arriving in the United States, however, the employer told her and the other J-1 students that the jobs were not yet available. Lhan and the others had to borrow more money from their families to pay rent and buy food in the meantime.

After a month, the hotel placed Lhan in housekeeping. The workers repeatedly asked about switching to positions promised by the training plan, but the hotel never took them out of housekeeping. Lhan spent her entire internship making beds and cleaning toilets. She never made the $1,000 per month she was promised.

Lhan’s experience isn’t unique. Many interns and trainees invest thousands of dollars to come to the United States to receive professional training, only to spend their internship doing unskilled labor.

“What the sponsor and recruiter told me about the internship turned out to be a lie,” she said. “If I had known I was only going to be cleaning hotel rooms, I would not have paid so much money for the job.”

Lhan complained many times to the Thai recruiter, but nothing changed. After she complained, the U.S.-based agency working with her sponsor threatened to terminate her program, cancel her visa and deport her.

“The money to come here is a lot, but it is not just the money, it is our lives and hopes for the future,” she said. “Our families put all their hopes and dreams and money into our future and hope that we will get training here and then better ourselves and return home to make a better life. Instead, our dreams were shattered.”

Lhan Kassemwattan of Thailand was promised training in hospitality management at a hotel in Orlando. But after paying $8,000 as part of the J-1 Trainee and Intern Program, she spent her entire internship making beds and cleaning toilets – and never earned the $1,000 per month she expected.

Fernanda Alquinga Defaz was looking for an opportunity to jumpstart her career in hospitality management.

She discovered the J-1 Trainee and Intern Program through a brochure at her college in Ecuador. A recruiter introduced her to a sponsor, whose materials boasted that J-1 workers would receive “the knowledge, practical training, leadership and multicultural skills” necessary to succeed as a hospitality industry leader.

It sounded like the big break she’d been seeking. It was not only an opportunity to get the training she needed, but she would receive it at an American resort.

Fernanda paid nearly $3,000 for the opportunity, including $1,500 in fees to the Ecuadorian recruiter and the J-1 sponsor. Before leaving for the United States, she received a signed, detailed training plan from her sponsor. It guaranteed advanced training in management, leadership, supervision, scheduling and customer service.

It appeared as if everything was on track.

After Fernanda arrived in the United States in 2011, the sponsor placed her in the food and beverage department at the Embassy Suites Oceanside Resort in Myrtle Beach, S.C. She spent her time wiping down tables, mopping, polishing silverware and sweeping — a far cry from the management training she was promised.

She never received any advanced training.

“When I arrived to the U.S. and started working, I felt tricked,” she said. “I would have never invested so much money in the program had I known it was not going to be a training experience. But I had spent so much money to participate that I couldn’t just turn around and leave.”

Her pay was below the federal minimum wage. She was paid a $200 stipend every two weeks for performing at least 40 hours of work each week.

Fernanda and some of her co-workers filed complaints against the J-1 sponsor and the hotel with the Departments of State and Labor. The Department of Labor collected back wages on Fernanda’s behalf for the minimum wage violations. Despite this success, Fernanda knows other J-1 interns and trainees may not be so fortunate.

“I’m happy I recouped some of the money I lost, but I worry that my sponsor and other J-1 sponsors are continuing to recruit young people with false promises,” she said.

The J-1 Exchange Visitor Program has veered from its original mission of cultural exchange. Far from tools of diplomacy, the Summer Work Travel and Trainee and Intern programs in particular have become expansive and virtually unregulated low-wage guest worker programs that are spinning out of control as employers use them as sources of cheap and vulnerable labor.

As demand for J-1 workers in low-wage employment increases, so will incidents of abuse and fraud. This result will come at the expense of both J-1 workers and the U.S. workers they displace. It will also harm the international reputation of the United States. Congress and the State Department must make fundamental changes to the program to break this cycle and return the program to its original mission of cultural exchange.

Recommendations for the Summer Work Travel and Trainee and Intern Programs

I. Recommendations for Congress:

• Place a statutory cap on the number of exchange visitors who can enter the United States in the J-1 Summer Work Travel category. This cap should be adjusted annually and correspond to the youth unemployment rate.

• Require employers seeking to use J-1 guest workers to first recruit U.S. workers for the jobs and certify that no U.S. workers are available before hiring J-1 workers.

• Require employers to pay J-1 guest workers a prevailing wage established by the Department of Labor. This requirement will prevent J-1 workers from depressing the wages of U.S. workers.

• Authorize the Department of Labor to oversee and regulate the work aspects of the J-1 exchange visitor program.

• Regulate the recruitment of J-1 guest workers. Regulations, for example, should prohibit sponsors and international labor recruiters from charging fees to potential participants and require more transparency in the recruitment process. Fees that are currently charged to participants should be shifted to the employers that ultimately benefit from the J-1 guest workers’ labor.

• Require employers to bear all the costs of recruiting and transporting J-1 guest workers to the United States to prevent workers from arriving deeply in debt.

• Implement statutes that protect J-1 workers from retaliation when they organize or complain about working conditions.

• Grant J-1 guest workers a private, federal cause of action to enforce the promises in their job order as well as their contracts with recruiters, sponsors and employers.

• Make J-1 workers eligible for federally funded legal services so they have meaningful access to justice in the United States.

II. Recommendations for the Department of State and other federal agencies administering the J-1 program:

• The Department of State and Department of Labor should engage in joint and active enforcement of program rules governing recruiters, sponsors and host employers.

• The cultural exchange aspects of the program should be expressly defined by regulation and the acceptable jobs for Summer Work Travel participants need to be enumerated in the regulations. Sponsors should not be permitted to place students in jobs outside of the established list.

• Housekeeping and other jobs with little opportunity for cultural exchange should be added to the list of banned occupations for the Summer Work Travel Program.

• Regulations should establish a minimum level of cultural activity that a sponsor is required to provide to program participants outside of the workplace.

• J-1 workers should be guaranteed a minimum number of work hours to ensure they have sufficient income to defray their costs and partake in cultural activities without having to get a second job.

• Sponsors should be required to independently verify that any housing costs or deductions are consistent with the fair rental value in the area, and submit confirming documentation to the departments.

• Employers should be prohibited from simultaneously using the J-1 program and the H-2 guest worker programs. They should also be barred from employing J-1 guest workers if the employer has been certified for H-2 workers to perform the same or similar work in the past three years or if it has been found to have violated program rules in any other guest worker visa category, is being investigated by any federal agency for alleged violations, or is party to an ongoing lawsuit related to the alleged violations.

• Sponsors and employers should be required to certify to the Department of State and the Department of Labor that they complied with all program regulations and applicable federal and state laws before each placement season begins.

• Information about the J-1 program (including the occupations J-1 workers are employed in and the wages paid to them) should be made publicly available and easily accessible to ensure that the program and its impact on the U.S. labor market can be monitored and that the regulating agencies can be held accountable by stakeholders and the public.

III. Recommendations for Trainee and Intern Program regulations:

• Regulations should require that all internships and training programs meet the requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Payment schemes, such as stipends, that result in an hourly wage rate below the federal minimum wage should be expressly prohibited.

• Regulations should establish a minimum amount of on-the-job training that employers or sponsors must provide to interns and trainees.

• Regulations should bar housekeeping, janitorial work, dining room attendants or other unskilled work from mandatory rotations in the hospitality industry.

• Regulations should require sponsors and host employers to certify to the Department of State and Department of Labor that they will not place interns or trainees in casual or unskilled labor, as currently defined by the regulations, in addition to certifying that they will comply with the program regulations, before the internship or training program begins.

These J-1 students walk to work at a Microtel hotel in Gulf Shores, Ala. They each had to clean 22 rooms a day.

• Author Meredith B. Stewart
• Editors Booth Gunter, Jamie Kizzire, Jim Knoepp, Naomi Tsu
• Researchers Janet Sosa, Palmer Buchholz, Kristin Donovan, Suchi Mathur, Elizabeth Sprotzer
• Design Director Russell Estes
• Designer Sunny Paulk
• To view or share this report online, visit sp.lc/culture-shock-report
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