Remember those cultural exchange students who paid up to $6000 for a summer job and an educational experience in the United States and found themselves heaving 60-pound boxes of chocolate on the night shift at a Hershey factory in Pennsylvania?

Julia Preston has a front-page story in the New York Times explaining how Hershey and the private contractor overseeing the exchange abused a successful 50-year-old State Department program.

The students found themselves overworked, isolated, and unable to live on their meager wages. Like many guest workers they found their paychecks docked for a myriad of “expenses” without explanation. The students tried to complain to the private contractor who oversaw the program for the State Department, the Council for Educational Travel, USA, but they were told that they would be sent home if they complained. The students finally got the State Department’s attention by going on strike.

The students were J-1 visa holders. The J-1 visa is supposed to be an opportunity for university students to experience life in the U.S. at no cost to the U.S. taxpayer. The applicants work for up to four months and travel for a month. The program has grown rapidly, 130,000 students participated in 2008, up from just 30,000 in 1998. Because this is a cultural exchange program, the students’ working conditions are not subject to the usual level of oversight.

[Photo credit: wuperruper, Creative Commons.]