Speaker 1: We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United
Speaker 1: States undetected, undocumented, unchecked.
Speaker 2: And complete the dang fins. This bill that we will
Speaker 2: find today is not a revolutionary bill.
Speaker 1: Have old your bucket where you are.
Speaker 3: We have the facts, and I am, you know, animantly
Speaker 3: against illegal immigrants.
Speaker 2: They're coming in by the thousands, Just unbelievable. All is
Speaker 2: an immorality.
Speaker 1: Who are you rooting for?
Speaker 3: Those masters of the universe are added again, They're not
Speaker 3: sending their best your man, you flowing up.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Parsing Immigration Policy, the podcast of the Center
Speaker 1: for Immigration Studies. My name is Mark Gricorian, executive director
Speaker 1: of the Center, and today we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about one of the alphabet soup of visas. They start
Speaker 1: with A and I think it for now goes to
Speaker 1: V as in victor. There isn't a W yet, although
Speaker 1: there probably will be. But one we're talking about is
Speaker 1: the J visa. And that's important because it covers a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different things. Ostensibly, it's for cultural exchange,
Speaker 1: and anybody who's followed immigration long enough knows that that
Speaker 1: kind of term is kind of Orwellian lie, or at
Speaker 1: least an exaggeration because there are some people, there are
Speaker 1: sub categories of this j visa. Some people really are
Speaker 1: coming for cultural exchange or educational exchange purposes, but there's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of people coming basically as foreign workers. Everything.
Speaker 1: Pretty much every visa program turns into a worker program.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the there's a rule I forget.
Speaker 1: There's several people who have claimed this rule, and that
Speaker 1: is that any organization that isn't explicitly conservative will become
Speaker 1: more liberal over time. Well, I think it's a similar
Speaker 1: thing with visa programs. Any visa program that isn't explicitly
Speaker 1: not for employment will become a foreign worker program over time.
Speaker 1: And so we have in studio our own Jessica Vaughan,
Speaker 1: Director of Policy Studies, who is going to talk about
Speaker 1: what's the story with jay visas. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons is timely is that many the large parts of
Speaker 1: the Javisa program or programs within the under the JAY
Speaker 1: visa are related to summertime. There's something called summer work travel,
Speaker 1: which she'll talk about. We've did a long, published long
Speaker 1: reports about this a number of years ago. It's also
Speaker 1: a camp counselor's program which is presumably mostly summer related.
Speaker 1: So in a sense, this is the JAVISA is kind
Speaker 1: of a summer visa, though not explicitly or exclusively, And
Speaker 1: so it seemed that it was pretty timely to get
Speaker 1: a kind of overall look at what's going on with javisa. So, Jessica,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming in, and maybe you decide where to start,
Speaker 1: but maybe what are the components of the javisa the
Speaker 1: sub programs under this visa umbrella.
Speaker 2: Hi Mark, Yes, glad to be here. And this is
Speaker 2: another one of those visa programs that was sold to
Speaker 2: US as something a cultural exchange program. But not only
Speaker 2: are these visitors mostly workers, but also few of them
Speaker 2: are meaningful exchanges, which you know, you would think about
Speaker 2: Americans also going overseas, but that only happens in some
Speaker 2: of these programs. And there are about fifteen categories of
Speaker 2: exchange visitor visas, ranging from doctors, o pairs, camp counselors
Speaker 2: to these summer work travel visitors workers who are working
Speaker 2: as lifeguards and scooping ice cream and cleaning hotels and
Speaker 2: so on. There are some that are purely academic short
Speaker 2: term scholars college students participating in a genuine exchange from overseas,
Speaker 2: and then there are plenty of American students who go
Speaker 2: the other direction, or high school students as well, But
Speaker 2: the non work categories only represent twenty percent of the
Speaker 2: total of JAY visas that are given out, at least
Speaker 2: as far as the twenty twenty five numbers go. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, there were two hundred and seventy five
Speaker 2: thousand JAY visas issued, and only twenty percent of them
Speaker 2: were in what we think of as the traditional exchange
Speaker 2: programs like high school fulbright scholars, short term scholars, even
Speaker 2: visiting professors and government visitors are another category, but they're
Speaker 2: all much smaller than the work categories.
Speaker 1: Just the real exchange programs would be just to sort
Speaker 1: of clarify for people like if an American goes to
Speaker 1: Italy for his sophomore year abroad, and some Italians say,
Speaker 1: comes here for his sophomore year, But that's what a
Speaker 1: javisa is kind of supposed to be. And there are
Speaker 1: some people.
Speaker 2: Like that, right, yes, there are some people like that.
Speaker 2: There are some problems in those programs as well, which
Speaker 2: relate back to one of the fundamental problems with the
Speaker 2: entire program, which we can talk about in a little bit.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and it's not an insignificant number of visitors either.
Speaker 2: As I said, two hundred and seventy five thousand people
Speaker 2: coming in under these programs. And the issue here is
Speaker 2: that it is a work visa program, but it is
Speaker 2: run by the State Department, the Bureau of Educational and
Speaker 2: Cultural Affairs, and that director reports to the Undersecretary for
Speaker 2: Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. So these programs, this visa
Speaker 2: category was invented and sold to the public and to
Speaker 2: Congress as a tool of public diplomacy. This idea that
Speaker 2: I think is pretty controversial that if we just allow
Speaker 2: all these nice foreigners to come here and experience America,
Speaker 2: they're going to love it. They're going to love us,
Speaker 2: They're going to go back home.
Speaker 1: And America right, Well, that's kind of the point. Really. Originally,
Speaker 1: that's the whole reason to have foreign students too, at
Speaker 1: least that's the way you know, jed regular foreign student program.
Speaker 2: But it simply doesn't work that way. It is a
Speaker 2: honestly a lucrative, cheap labor program for the most part,
Speaker 2: and often these experiences are fine. In a lot of
Speaker 2: cases they are exploitative, but someone's making money on it,
Speaker 2: and the people doing that are third parties that the
Speaker 2: organizations that have been a proved by the State Department
Speaker 2: to run these exchange programs. There are more than fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred of them who are approved as quote unquote cultural
Speaker 2: exchange organizations. And they all have these names like the
Speaker 2: Institute for Promoting Global Understanding or you know, the Organization
Speaker 2: for World Peace through Cultural.
Speaker 1: Exchange, did George orwell call your.
Speaker 2: Office right And they're nothing more than glorified staffing companies
Speaker 2: for the most part, at least the ones that run
Speaker 2: the work oriented JVISA programs. And this is part of
Speaker 2: the problem. First of all, these are these programs are
Speaker 2: in the wrong agency you know, State Department should you
Speaker 2: know has no business overseeing these programs. It ought to
Speaker 2: be managed by the Labor Department. But this is the
Speaker 2: other problem is that these sponsors and the State Department
Speaker 2: has basically outsourced all oversight to these companies hu use
Speaker 2: companies who are making big money off of this program
Speaker 2: off of these visas. How does it work? The sponsors
Speaker 2: usually hire recruiters in other countries to find people who
Speaker 2: are willing to pay money thousands of dollars for the
Speaker 2: chance to come and work in the United States, even
Speaker 2: study in the United States. What could go wrong with that, right,
Speaker 2: So then they turn around and offer these workers to
Speaker 2: employers who can pay them pretty much whatever they want.
Speaker 2: They're supposed to house and feed them, but they're not
Speaker 2: usually subject to the kinds of monitoring or wage controls
Speaker 2: that exist, at least theoretically in some of our other
Speaker 2: guest worker programs. And you know, this time sometimes leads
Speaker 2: to exploitation. It's like almost guaranteed to bring exploitation. There's
Speaker 2: only one situation that I know of that has been
Speaker 2: regulated adequately by a state for wages, and that is
Speaker 2: the state of Massachusetts. Because of some horrible cases involving
Speaker 2: pairs and OH pairs are one of the work categories
Speaker 2: under the j VISA program, they passed a state law
Speaker 2: that mandates that OH pairs be paid the state minimum wage.
Speaker 2: And that was very controversial because you know, the placement
Speaker 2: companies who actually have been forced to do a better
Speaker 2: job to screen these people. It used to be that
Speaker 2: almost anybody in some other country could apply as an
Speaker 2: O pair, whether they you know, have any interest in
Speaker 2: caring for children, are any good at it? Now they
Speaker 2: at least have to go through training, and in Massachusetts
Speaker 2: they have to earn minimum wage. So that's a good
Speaker 2: example of how a state is being responsible about it.
Speaker 2: But that's the only state that I know of that
Speaker 2: does that. And I don't think that the state of
Speaker 2: Massachusetts is looking into, for example, the kids work in
Speaker 2: his lifeguards or scoop and ice cream on Cape Cod
Speaker 2: or any of those situations.
Speaker 1: And there's also no labor market test to prevent American
Speaker 1: workers from being displaced or harmed. Right, that's right.
Speaker 2: And a lot of the jobs, particularly under the Summer
Speaker 2: Work Travel program, which is the largest J VISA program
Speaker 2: and it's one hundred and five thousand of these visas
Speaker 2: were given out in twenty twenty five for summer work
Speaker 2: travel in particular.
Speaker 1: And so they're in like resorts basically like you were
Speaker 1: saying Cape Cod, but I mean they're in like beach resorts.
Speaker 1: People often wonder, you know, I'm going to a beach
Speaker 1: resort and there's this bulgarian girl, you know, scooping ice
Speaker 1: cream or whatever it is hotel. Those those are J visa.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. There's some quote unquote sponsor ie staffing
Speaker 2: company that you know, hired a headhunter to get that
Speaker 2: young woman to pay thousands of dollars to come here
Speaker 2: and hopefully be living in a nice dorm and meeting
Speaker 2: nice people and getting paid, you know, and reasonably working
Speaker 2: reasonable hours. But it doesn't always work out that way.
Speaker 2: And our colleague Jerry Camer wrote about this for years.
Speaker 2: All those stories are on our website. You can even
Speaker 2: read about it in the New York Times, the exploitation
Speaker 2: of j one workers.
Speaker 1: But nothing point was American kids who want summer jobs,
Speaker 1: you know in Ocean City for instance. I think you
Speaker 1: may have worked in summer jobs in Ocean City, Maryland,
Speaker 1: which is on the beach. And Jerry wrote about this.
Speaker 1: A lot a lot of those jobs again, summer you know,
Speaker 1: jobs for college students, teenagers, what have you, would be
Speaker 1: filled in January February before the American kids who maybe
Speaker 1: during spring break would go out there and start lining
Speaker 1: up jobs. Well, it's too bad, jobs are already filled
Speaker 1: by foreign workers.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, worked in an Irish pub on the
Speaker 2: boardwalk in Ocean City for two summers. So these are
Speaker 2: not jobs Americans won't do. These are staffing companies who
Speaker 2: convince employers that they can solve all their recruitment needs
Speaker 2: by bringing in workers from abroad. And by the way,
Speaker 2: even though their name is the Institute for World Peace
Speaker 2: or whatever it is, they're making money off of this
Speaker 2: arrangement sometimes, you know, at the expense of American kids
Speaker 2: not having opportunities and visa workers being abused, and you know,
Speaker 2: when they complain, they don't have any recourse because the
Speaker 2: State Department has totally outsourced oversight to these sponsoring organizations.
Speaker 2: And that is a problem that even when violations occur,
Speaker 2: these staffing companies slash sponsors are almost never barred, never suspended,
Speaker 2: never held accountable for the problems in this program. So
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's sort of at best a cheap
Speaker 2: labor program that does displays Americans, but at worst it
Speaker 2: really can involve human trafficking. Can be a form of
Speaker 2: human trafficking.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Not only that there is a higher than average overstay
Speaker 2: rate in the exchange visitor category that we know, you
Speaker 2: know from the DHS monitoring of overstays that's occurred in
Speaker 2: recent years, and you know some countries have double digit
Speaker 2: overstay rates. We have seen a slight decline in issuance.
Speaker 2: It's not really a significant decline in j visa issuances
Speaker 2: under the Trump administration. The decline is less than ten
Speaker 2: percent from about you know, just over three hundred thousand
Speaker 2: issued in twenty twenty four to about two hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy five thousand in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: But that still means a quarter million foreign workers when
Speaker 1: you take out the real exchange people.
Speaker 2: And those declines happen in the scholarly categories. And I
Speaker 2: suspect that it's a result of fewer Chinese being getting
Speaker 2: Jay visas to come here, as you know, and there
Speaker 2: have been some problems with those. There have been these
Speaker 2: cases of Chinese short term scholars who have been caught,
Speaker 2: you know, bringing in monkey brains or taking out you know.
Speaker 1: Espionage, industrial espionage, or stealing secrets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on American college campuses, no less, but I suspect
Speaker 2: that that's the reason for the decline. The number of
Speaker 2: summer work travel visas has stayed almost exactly the same.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Yeah, And so there is this high rate of overstays.
Speaker 2: But you know, that's something that really needs to be
Speaker 2: addressed in terms of visa issuances, like and you know,
Speaker 2: countries that with high overstay rates shouldn't be getting these visas,
Speaker 2: and we are seeing a little bit of a decline
Speaker 2: in that in certain situations. But really this is going
Speaker 2: on the way it has always gone on. And in
Speaker 2: my experience and observation, the people who are put in
Speaker 2: charge of this office at the State Apartment, the ECA,
Speaker 2: it's called Educational Cultural Affairs kind of understand their job
Speaker 2: as one of sort of Kumbai, ya feel good, let's
Speaker 2: promote America. And they don't really understand how these programs operate,
Speaker 2: how they're used, and that's a problem. They really need
Speaker 2: to dig down into this a little bit more. It
Speaker 2: usually only happens when there's some kind of scandal.
Speaker 1: Now you may may or may not know this, but
Speaker 1: this is the kind of situation where I would expect
Speaker 1: there's some kind of revolving door where a State Department official.
Speaker 1: It seems like some of them would then move to
Speaker 1: work for these contractors that they've been paying for all
Speaker 1: these years. I mean, this is the kind of you know,
Speaker 1: what is it, one hand washes the other sort of
Speaker 1: revolving door kind of thing.
Speaker 2: There have been people in oversight roles who were career
Speaker 2: Foreign Service officers. I worked with some of them on
Speaker 2: reforms years ago. But usually it is civil service employees,
Speaker 2: you know, which can be a good thing if they
Speaker 2: really take seriously their role in keeping an eye on
Speaker 2: these programs. But historically it just has not worked well.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's just no way. State Department is not
Speaker 2: set up to oversee staffing companies, right exactly, especially fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred of them that are working all over the country.
Speaker 1: Now, they do have to be certified or whatever by
Speaker 1: the stay is a.
Speaker 2: Process, right, yes, But once they get certified again, like
Speaker 2: there's if something goes wrong, there really is no accountability
Speaker 2: that happens. I can't you know. I've tried to find
Speaker 2: an example of a staffing of excuse me, sponsor that
Speaker 2: was barred because of violations, and they can't find one.
Speaker 1: They usually can't do. I mean, the State Department has
Speaker 1: the power.
Speaker 2: To do that, but usually they're just suspended until they
Speaker 2: fix things.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 2: So the sponsor might get rid of some dodgy third
Speaker 2: party that they've allowed to work under their umbrella. But
Speaker 2: it's a very comfortable relationship that they have because this
Speaker 2: is about world peace mart right.
Speaker 1: Right, I understand, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's really the key to reforming this.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, when you think about the kind
Speaker 2: of nightmare scenarios that happen, and there have been many
Speaker 2: of them, it boils down to someone seeing an opportunity
Speaker 2: to make a buck.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The one case I tell people about a lot that
Speaker 2: they're shocked by is this case. And this is how.
Speaker 2: It's not just the summer work travel program. It's also
Speaker 2: some of these academic exchanges. There was a case out
Speaker 2: at Western Iowa Technical Community College, which.
Speaker 1: Is preposterous to begin with, that any community college should
Speaker 1: have any visa access of any kind foreign students to
Speaker 1: any of that stuff. It's ludicrous anyway, Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2: So there were dozens, I think it was about three
Speaker 2: dozen from South America who were recruited to come for
Speaker 2: what they were told was a culinary and robotics education program,
Speaker 2: and they literally ended up working long hours in a
Speaker 2: dog food factory, and the staffing company was garnishing half
Speaker 2: their wages for their living expenses in the dorms and
Speaker 2: their tuition right. And it turned out that the community
Speaker 2: college ended up settling for like eight million dollars to
Speaker 2: give back to these students. It turned out that the
Speaker 2: person running the staffing company was an employee of the
Speaker 2: community college and a friend of theirs that was being
Speaker 2: paid to recruit students in South America.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: So explain to me how this is promoting the United
Speaker 2: States of America as a great country and at all
Speaker 2: enhancing our public diplomacy mission worldwide. It just isn't a.
Speaker 1: Couple of the other I mean, summer work travel we've
Speaker 1: talked about, and that's the biggest work program under the
Speaker 1: JAY visa. But the ones that people might also be
Speaker 1: more familiar with is the camp counselor's program. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a separate program to import counselors for summer camps from abroad,
Speaker 1: because apparently teaching kids how to make little bracelets or
Speaker 1: whatever it is is a job American two two and
Speaker 1: also O pairs, which a lot of which more people
Speaker 1: are going to be familiar with. Anything interesting about those
Speaker 1: two programs other than the.
Speaker 2: Fact that there, you know, we're still giving out a
Speaker 2: lot of them. Twenty twenty five, there were thirty two thousand,
Speaker 2: four hundred and seventy J one visas issued for camp counselors.
Speaker 2: Sure it is absurd, and sixteen thousand, eight hundred and
Speaker 2: forty OH pair visas.
Speaker 1: And the numbers there are interesting because that's a smaller
Speaker 1: the OH pairs. Obviously it's a smaller number, but OH
Speaker 1: pairs are used by a pretty elite layer of society,
Speaker 1: the very kinds of people who either themselves help make
Speaker 1: government policy or have the kind of outsized voice like
Speaker 1: they're in the same country club as the congressman. And
Speaker 1: so it becomes hard to crack down on that kind
Speaker 1: of thing because you're going to hear from it from
Speaker 1: your from the wives of your golf buddies, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 2: That is exactly the same with the camp counselors when
Speaker 2: you think about it. These are camps that are usually
Speaker 2: in very nice places and have all these nice smiling
Speaker 2: people from you know, Bulgaria and Thailand and wherever for
Speaker 2: this cultural experience at this expensive summer camp. That's how
Speaker 2: these programs are perpetuated.
Speaker 1: So how much of the specifics of the jvs, of
Speaker 1: the particular labor importation programs, how much of those are
Speaker 1: set in statue? In other words, is there an actual
Speaker 1: law that says there have to be there has to
Speaker 1: be a camp counselor program, or is that the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that state departments say developed through regulation and
Speaker 1: could change through regulation.
Speaker 2: The State Department has all the discretion to determine these categories,
Speaker 2: and in fact, they could just decide that we're not
Speaker 2: going to have some of these categories at all, right, right,
Speaker 2: if somebody had the courage to do that.
Speaker 1: It gets back to the country club golf buddies issue.
Speaker 2: But so the point is, and I think basically understanding awareness,
Speaker 2: Like they're like, oh, that's the full bride program, right,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean they just don't understand. So yeah,
Speaker 2: this is my understanding is of the law is that
Speaker 2: this is totally within the discretion of the State Department
Speaker 2: in administer. And there are some programs that they're going
Speaker 2: to want to keep, like the government visitor program. That's
Speaker 2: when you know, our government sponsors some people to come over,
Speaker 2: you know for some kind of interaction or conference, and
Speaker 2: you know that's those are good programs. Those are public,
Speaker 2: true public diplomacy. But that's not even thirteen hundred people
Speaker 2: a year, right, So you could cut this program by
Speaker 2: eighty percent and make it an actual public diplomacy program.
Speaker 2: But I suppose Congress could direct the State Department or say,
Speaker 2: you know, we're only going to fund you to do
Speaker 2: these kinds of exchanges.
Speaker 1: Well, holding my breath on that, since Congress has trouble
Speaker 1: naming post offices, let alone anything else. But the point
Speaker 1: is this is something that Secretary Rubio, for instance, could
Speaker 1: have his people work on at least rein in if
Speaker 1: not get rid of some of these.
Speaker 2: Categories to create some oversight right right and meaningful. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that there should be stifferent penalties for sponsors,
Speaker 2: and I think also one of the things they could
Speaker 2: do very easily is say, if you have any overstays
Speaker 2: who came over under the auspices of your sponsored program,
Speaker 2: you're not doing it again next year, right right. Some
Speaker 2: of the people I know who've worked on the government
Speaker 2: run exchange program, and there are people who are getting
Speaker 2: the visas who are coming from countries with high overstay rates,
Speaker 2: they escort them to the airplane right to make sure
Speaker 2: they go home, because they want to preserve that program
Speaker 2: for the future. But no such expectation is there for
Speaker 2: sponsors in these work j visa programs, and.
Speaker 1: There should be and I mean even like look O
Speaker 1: pairs for instance. Again the numbers are small, but the
Speaker 1: kind of people who are interested in policy are going
Speaker 1: to know more about O pairs probably than maybe the
Speaker 1: camp counselors of the summer work travel. The pretense is
Speaker 1: that there's some kind of cultural exchange going on, whereas
Speaker 1: you know, college age girls from some place changing diapers
Speaker 1: and they get a day off a week where they
Speaker 1: go to the bar, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And to Americans, it's just.
Speaker 1: The whole premise of it is preposterous.
Speaker 2: It is. And it's not like again like there are
Speaker 2: no Americans who would work, as there are plenty of them,
Speaker 2: right yeah.
Speaker 1: And the thing is though, and this is and this
Speaker 1: is true with the summer work travel for the you know,
Speaker 1: resort jobs in the summer, even cam counselors, is that
Speaker 1: when this flow of some quarter million foreign workers concentrated
Speaker 1: in these areas happens over a number of years, it
Speaker 1: distorts the labor market so that when say a O
Speaker 1: pair company might otherwise have had a kind of nationwide
Speaker 1: recruiting program, well why bother to do that when it's
Speaker 1: just so much easier. There's people lining up in Columbia
Speaker 1: to go and do it. So let's just take the
Speaker 1: kind of path of least resistance and just use the
Speaker 1: visa program.
Speaker 2: Right, And that's exactly what happens in the J program
Speaker 2: summer work travel, just like the other guest worker programs,
Speaker 2: whether it's H two B, H two A.
Speaker 1: Are there any numerical caps on any of this?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: No, okay, so it's.
Speaker 2: Totally totally unlimited. It's you know, which makes it a
Speaker 2: rising that you know.
Speaker 1: It's only a coteriated foreign workers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And summer work travel is only one hundred
Speaker 2: and five thousand, So are there maybe it's because there's
Speaker 2: only so many people abroad? Will you fork over the
Speaker 2: money to the recruiter.
Speaker 1: There's seven billion people in the world that probably could
Speaker 1: be bigger, and it would get bigger over time if
Speaker 1: you know there weren't some kind of oversight or standards. So,
Speaker 1: as far as reform goes, are you aware of anything
Speaker 1: within state to tighten up on these or are there
Speaker 1: any legislative proposals to.
Speaker 2: Tighten up No, I'm not aware of anything at the moment.
Speaker 2: The State Department, as far as I've seen over decades,
Speaker 2: is that they only move to tighten up on it
Speaker 2: when there's some scandal, right that emerges as a result.
Speaker 1: But even there, you have the same you have a
Speaker 1: similar phenomenon to what we've seen over the past couple
Speaker 1: of months, where, for instance, ICE or others will crack
Speaker 1: down on fraud in some pro cracked on an H
Speaker 1: one B fraud or on OPT fraud, but doesn't actually
Speaker 1: change the program itself. In other words, if there's I
Speaker 1: mean just to pick camp counselors. If there's enough fraud,
Speaker 1: I have no idea. If there is or not, or
Speaker 1: exploitation or something, then get rid of the thing rather
Speaker 1: than make a big show of arresting a couple of
Speaker 1: people or maybe debarring a company from participating and then
Speaker 1: just its business as usual the next year.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's that's the problem is that nobody wants
Speaker 2: to really attack it conceptually. They just always think that
Speaker 2: they can fix it through more regulation, when the best
Speaker 2: regulation would be not to have it right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so short of that, which obviously would be
Speaker 1: the way to do it, are there some specific concrete things,
Speaker 1: you know, two or three things that are realistically achievable
Speaker 1: that would at least make this less harmful than it
Speaker 1: is already?
Speaker 2: The work programs should be turned over to the Labor
Speaker 2: Department and given to them.
Speaker 1: To regulate, and that could be done right now. There's
Speaker 1: a statute doesn't say that it has to be done
Speaker 1: by the state department.
Speaker 2: Uh, that I'm not sure about. I think there would
Speaker 2: have to be change, yes, okay, yes, to do that.
Speaker 2: You know, if they feel like, you know, America can't
Speaker 2: live without their foreign lifeguards and ice cream scoopers and okay,
Speaker 2: Labor department run it like a labor program. There are
Speaker 2: penalties for labor violations, and they you know, they know
Speaker 2: how to run guestworker programs because that's what it is.
Speaker 2: And again, you know, I think there should be deparment
Speaker 2: of any sponsor who does not make sure that every
Speaker 2: person who comes on a jvisa departs right. And I
Speaker 2: think states could get involved also in regulating the employers
Speaker 2: who are taking advantage of these programs and the sponsors
Speaker 2: that are licensed in their states right to take care
Speaker 2: of it. But you know, again, I think it's increasing
Speaker 2: awareness of how these programs are actually run that's critical
Speaker 2: to getting anybody to take action. There's one other category
Speaker 2: of j visas that we haven't talked about, and I
Speaker 2: don't want that a lot of people aren't familiar with
Speaker 2: how this operates, and that's the what's called the Alien
Speaker 2: Physician program. Okay, this one is not a public diplomacy
Speaker 2: program in any way. It's really a brain drain program
Speaker 2: that allows foreign medical grads to come here on exchange
Speaker 2: visas and be placed in what they call underserved.
Speaker 1: Areas, rural areas something like that.
Speaker 2: To work as doctors and then stay here. And there
Speaker 2: were forty six hundred of those given in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: And you know, we can debate over whether we have
Speaker 2: a shortage of doctors and why, but the really insidious
Speaker 2: thing about this category is that these foreign doctors actually
Speaker 2: are play least first in the annual placement of new
Speaker 2: medical school graduates wow into jobs, and you know, they
Speaker 2: get their assignments first, and there are literally American medical
Speaker 2: school grads who are not able to get jobs right
Speaker 2: as a result.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's even an organization Doctors without Jobs right, or
Speaker 1: as I call it, and prois that two is a
Speaker 1: takeoff on the Doctors without Borders. That's interesting. I forgot
Speaker 1: that was under j And there's also isn't there some
Speaker 1: issue where they're not allowed to convert to a Green
Speaker 1: card while they're here, but they can get a waiver,
Speaker 1: and the waivers are like has become kind of the standards,
Speaker 1: like everybody gets a waiver.
Speaker 2: Right right. There is a section of the law that
Speaker 2: says that if you come to the United States on
Speaker 2: a jay visa, that you may not return unless you
Speaker 2: get a blessing from your home country. But the doctor,
Speaker 2: you know that that has there are all these exceptions
Speaker 2: to it now and particularly for the doctors that you
Speaker 2: know a lot of people are able to avoid that
Speaker 2: and end up staying here. In the case of the overstays,
Speaker 2: obviously they just stay. They don't care. But that is
Speaker 2: something defenders of this program point to as a way
Speaker 2: of saying, well, this is not a brain drain. You know,
Speaker 2: this is how we make sure they go home, but
Speaker 2: it really doesn't work in practice. And I you know, again,
Speaker 2: that's something the State Department could look at enforcing more
Speaker 2: rigorously than it has.
Speaker 1: And good, let's we've hit our half an hour and
Speaker 1: just too for people's information, we have a short paper
Speaker 1: that's going to be on the website that kind of
Speaker 1: gives it's not so much analytical, it's kind of what
Speaker 1: are the numbers, what's the current situation, just so people know.
Speaker 1: And this really is something that is one of these
Speaker 1: guestworker programs like OPT that runs to some degree under
Speaker 1: the radar, and actually this is even more under the
Speaker 1: radar because at least OPT Optional Practical Training, which is
Speaker 1: another Orwellian label, has kind of broken out more into
Speaker 1: the public consciousness. Whereas the quarter million foreign workers were
Speaker 1: importing every year under various jvs of programs. It's something
Speaker 1: that really hasn't broken out into the public and so
Speaker 1: hopefully this will bring a little more attention to it,
Speaker 1: and I'm confident you will keep your eye on this
Speaker 1: in the future. Thanks Jessica for coming in.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Parsing Immigration Policy. Thank
Speaker 1: you to our guest, thank you to our producer Brian Griffith,
Speaker 1: and thanks to all of you for tuning in, and
Speaker 1: I hope you'll tune in next week.