State Department Takes Baby Steps to End Visa Fraud

By Joe Guzzardi
November 9, 2011

During the last three decades, the federal government has stood idly by while its immigration laws have been ignored, circumvented and unofficially rewritten to serve illegal immigrants and their advocates. As a result, abuses are rampant. Bogus documentation like the matricula consular card and the improper use of taxpayer identification numbers enable aliens to move into the mainstream. Once there, illegal immigrants lobby, successfully in some states, for in-state tuition, driver’s licenses and other costly entitlements.

The federal government should have immediately and forcefully intervened to end fraud, including that involving non-immigrant visas, and thereby cut the eventual problems off before they began.

Has Washington D.C. finally awakened? Recent action on Capitol Hill indicates that the answer may be yes. Last week, the State Department announced that it would limit the numbers of non-immigrant J-1 visas to this year’s level and place a moratorium on new businesses sponsors. The J-1, a so called summer travel/work exchange program for foreign-born students, is notorious for its history of misuse.

The J-1 is widely used by unscrupulous employers to hire foreign-born students (cheap labor) for summer jobs under the guise of improving international good will. Instead, it has had the opposite effect. Earlier this year, for example, the Hershey Chocolate plant was at the center of the national news when college kids staged a walk out. Students from China, Nigeria, Romania and Ukraine protested Hershey’s violations that included excessive hard physical labor, overcrowded living conditions and net salaries well below minimum wage levels.

Here’s a partial list of jobs filled by J-1 visa holders and thus denied to American kids: Cape Cod wait staff, country club lifeguards, skiing assistants at luxury Colorado resorts and hotel personnel in Alaska. In perhaps the most egregious case, a broker for topless dancers advertised on its website that it’s “affiliated with designated visa sponsors” and could help interested women find jobs at Los Angeles and Las Vegas clubs.

No wonder Okaloosa Country (Florida) Sheriff’s Department inspector George Collins complained about what he called “epidemic” problems he’s seen in the State Department’s failure to deal with the J-1’s “severe exploitation”. Collins’ region, with its sandy beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, has many seasonal openings.

Once employers learned about the J-1’s loopholes, the visa’s popularity soared. In 1996, about 20,000 students participated. By 2008, more than 150,000 had come to the U.S. bringing the total during the last decade to more than one million.

Businesses love the J-1 because they can pay low wages and are not responsible for Medicare, Social Security or unemployment taxes.

In its press release announcing the new guidelines, the State Department wrote that the number of complaints remains “unacceptably high” and includes “improper work placements, fraudulent job offers and cancellations, inappropriate work hours and inadequate housing and transportation” —the very conditions that sparked the Hershey walk out.

While it’s encouraging to think that the State Department is coming to grips with the harsh reality of the J-1, it’s disappointing that it didn’t have the courage to cancel the program.

This summer’s teen unemployment rates were appalling. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for Americans ages 16 to 19, an all-time high of 27.6 percent could not get a job.

Please don’t tell me that American teens won’t work as a pool lifeguard or on a Cape Cod beach.

Joe Guzzardi has written editorial columns, mostly about immigration and related social issues, since 1986. He is a Senior Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and his columns are syndicated in various U.S. newspapers and websites. Contact him at [email protected].