Posted on: Monday, September 13, 2004

J-1 visa holders unhappy in their jobs

By Gaiutra Bahadur
Knight Ridder News Service

Voicu Bogdan came to the United States two years ago thinking he had signed up for management training that would launch him on a career in tourism at home in Romania.

Instead, the college graduate cooked burgers and swabbed floors for $7 an hour at a Wendy's in Paoli, Pa. He said he sometimes worked more than 50 hours a week without overtime pay.

The State Department forbids using the cultural and educational exchange program that brought Bogdan here purely to import workers. But that is what he and three others say has happened at six Wendy's restaurants in Chester County, Pa.

The franchise owner — Exton, Pa.-based Starboard Group — denies the allegation, calling the newcomers behind its fast-food counters "international students" who get hands-on training in business. The Cultural Exchange Network, the company that sponsored them for a fee of $700 each, also denies doing anything improper.

The workers' complaints point to a chink in a federal program that last year brought more than 200,000 au pairs, camp counselors, teachers and other foreign citizens to the United States under J-1 visas.

Both pro- and anti-immigration groups say employers increasingly abuse the gray areas of the Exchange Visitor Program to circumvent prevailing wage and other labor laws. The program has ballooned in recent years, and it has no cap.

"The J-1 provides a fig leaf for what's going on in many cases," said Jessica Vaughan, a policy analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that supports restricting immigration. "It really is more often about access to a very low-cost pool of labor than it is about any promotion of U.S. culture."

In recent years, some J-1 participants have complained to the State Department of being brought to the United States to sell produce from roadside stands in Maryland, dig ditches as construction workers in Louisiana and clean hotel rooms in Vermont.

It is against J-1 rules for sponsors or companies they work with to stray from structured plans for trainees approved by the State Department. "You can't charge somebody a fee telling them they're going to get trained and bring them over here to do cheap labor," a State Department official said, speaking about the visa program in general.

Starboard officials said the 20 Eastern Europeans who have worked at its Wendy's stores in the past four years received on-the-job training and followed the same path as employees on its management track.

"We're talking mopping floors, do the dishes, clean the grills," said Bob Zoeller, the franchise's chief executive officer. "It's important for management people to see what crew people are doing. When you come, you're going to do everything a crew person does. This isn't a sit-down job."

When asked the difference between J-1 trainees and employees on the management track, Zoeller said: "Nothing. ... They're paid the same salaries."

According to State Department guidelines, sponsors such as the Cultural Exchange Network, or CENET, must monitor the safety and well-being of the foreigners they bring into the United States. They also must check that third-party groups sponsors sometimes use follow the training plans approved by the U.S. government.

There have been other indications of problems with programs sponsored by CENET, a Missouri-based nonprofit that last year brought about 350 people into the United States. In all, about 1,500 J-1 sponsors are approved by the State Department.

In 2001, a State Department investigation found that CENET and two other sponsors had brought in electrical engineers and electricians under the guise of training them in American electrical methods, but instead put them to work at sometimes unrelated construction tasks at lower wages than U.S. workers. The State Department found new training sites for the foreign workers, but it did not sanction the sponsors.

In the past three years, about 15 sponsors have received letters of reprimand or had the size of their programs cut back, according to the State Department. None has been eliminated from the Exchange Visitor Program.

After its investigation into the construction workers' case, the State Department said it would develop new rules to prevent abuse. The rules are still being written, a spokeswoman said.

In the Wendy's case, CENET vice president Margaret Popham said she was not aware of trainees' complaints. She added that CENET keeps close tabs on the trainees. "We're fairly thorough," she said, "trying to ascertain what they came for is being done."