SPLC: Proposed rule changes won’t end abuse of cultural exchange program
Proposed changes to a cultural exchange program used by thousands of foreign college students who spend the summer living and working in the United States do not go far enough to protect them from exploitation, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in comments submitted to the U.S. State Department today.
The State Department’s proposed new regulations, published last month, offer only incremental changes to the J-1 Summer Work Travel program it oversees – falling short of the reform needed to end abuse that has transformed the program into a source of cheap, exploitable labor for many U.S. businesses. The State Department collected comments on the rule until today. It will now draft and publish the final rule.
“For many of the more than 100,000 workers who arrive each year on J-1 visas, the program provides no meaningful cultural exchange,” said Meredith Stewart, SPLC senior staff attorney. “Instead, many students find themselves working in grueling, low-wage jobs at the hands of unaccountable employers. Unfortunately, the proposed rule codifies some of the most serious problems plaguing the program.”
Congress created the J-1 program more than 50 years ago to foster good will between the people of the United States and other countries. Foreign students pay American job placement agencies designated by the State Department – called “sponsors” – to be placed with U.S. employers in jobs that offer cultural exchange opportunities. Oversight of the employers rests with the sponsors.
Staffing agencies have promoted the program as an inexpensive labor force, because employers do not have to pay payroll taxes for J-1 workers – a potential savings of around 8 percent of an employer’s total payroll expenses, according to the SPLC report Culture Shock: The Exploitation of J-1 Cultural Exchange Workers. Abuse of the program also harms U.S. workers who are passed over jobs.
The new rule would maintain the arrangement that leaves the responsibility of monitoring J-1 employers to sponsors – a situation that discourages sponsors from providing meaningful oversight because it jeopardizes their profitable relationships with employers.
In its comments, the SPLC urged the State Department to end sponsor-based monitoring, saying that employer supervision should be the responsibility of the State Department and the Department of Labor.
The SPLC also noted in its comments that while the proposed rule excludes many jobs that fail to encourage cultural exchange – including janitorial, waste management and custodial work – it does not eliminate housekeeping, which is arduous and isolating.
“I would never have come had I known the job was going to be so bad,” Joom, a Thai student who cleaned hotel rooms in Louisiana, told the SPLC for its report. “Housekeeping is hard work — my body hurt. This was not the cultural experience that we paid for.”
The proposed rule also removes language included in a 2012 State Department rule that required sponsors “to use extra caution when placing students at employers in lines of business that are frequently associated with human trafficking,” such as modeling agencies and housekeeping jobs.
The SPLC urged the State Department to make information about the J-1 program publicly available to ensure that the program can be held accountable.
