J-1 Visa Program - State Dept. announces new limits

[Jojo92122 1,924]

http://news.yahoo.com/video/politics-15749652/u-s-limits-troubled-student-visa-program-27181970.html

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/us_keeps_lid_on_growth_of_stud.html

U.S. keeps lid on growth of student visa program following Hershey distribution student-labor debacle

Despite protective measures added to a foreign guest worker program, many international students who came to the U.S. for jobs and culture this year again compared their experiences to slavery.

The U.S. State Department announced Monday it wouldn’t let the program get any bigger until problems are addressed.

No new organizations will be permitted to sponsor students who come on J-1 Summer Work Travel visas. No more than 103,000 J-1 visas — the number issued this year — will be issued to international students in 2012.

The halt on expansion will stay in place until a review, started last year, is finished.

The decision comes weeks after hundreds of foreign student workers protested conditions at The Hershey Co.’s Eastern Distribution Center III, where they worked.

The new measures fall short, according to a University of Pennsylvania law professor who heads the school’s international human rights and immigration clinic.

“It’s not enough that [the department] has launched an investigation. There has to be transparency and accountability in the process,” Sarah Paoletti said.

She said sponsors like Council for Educational Travel, USA, should be supervised by an independent body that could conduct spot checks and hold exit interviews with students.

Foreign students this year had plenty negative to say, according to the department’s notice Monday in the Federal Register.

“Despite these new regulations, the number of program complaints received this year continues to remain unacceptably high and includes, among other issues, reports of improper work placements, fraudulent job offers, job cancellations upon participant arrival in the United States, inappropriate work hours, and problems regarding housing and transportation,” the notice stated.