ใครทึ่มีลูกหลานอยากมาเรียนและทำงานที่อเมริกา โดยมีบริษัททำวีซ่านักเรียนให้ชื่อ Over Seas Ed Group หรือ OEG อ่านบทความนี้เพื่อเป็นความรู้
While working as a university English teacher in northern Thailand, many of my students headed to the U.S. on similar programs – the Thai program of choice is called Overseas Ed Group. The U.S. certainly has shaky standing abroad, but to 20-something co-eds in northern Thailand, the country is still, in many ways, the dream. My students loved Kanye West, idolized Brad Pitt, and thought it was cool that President Barack Obama plays basketball. They fantasized about shopping in New York City and hoped one day to drink coffee at a Starbucks on American soil.
In
August 2011, nearly 400 foreign students on a cultural exchange walked
off their job at a Hershey’s chocolate plant in Pennsylvania, claiming
that it was not the American experience they had signed up for. Like the
tens of thousands of other foreign students who come to the United
States every year, these Pennsylvania protestors were in the country as
part of a work-study exchange program – a means of allowing university
students from overseas to experience American life firsthand.
In exchange for a few thousand dollars, these programs, often affiliated with the State Department, promise students a J-1 Visa, cultural immersion, an opportunity to practice English, and the experience of daily life in America. But, these particular students at the Hershey’s plant claimed that what they got was manual labor, a lack of cultural immersion, and paycheck deductions that hardly made up for the costs of their visas. Rick Anya, the chief executive at the Council for Educational Travel, U.S.A. – the program through which these students came – spoke with The New York Times in August saying that the council was trying to respond to the students’ complaints.
For
years now, the American dream has been losing its luster, and the
plight of these students illustrates that reality. Driven by idealistic
dreams of life in America, foreign exchange students are finding
themselves greeted instead by high costs, low wages, and dashed hopes.
By all accounts, these students were expecting more than assembly line
work and were never told their American experience would require so much
heavy lifting. Working in a chocolate factory can be easily
romanticized, and a few months in the U.S. is not a hard sell to foreign
students who have grown up on American pop culture. I’d imagine it’s
easy for the work-study programs to gloss over all the not-so-glamorous
details.
While working as a university English teacher in northern Thailand, many of my students headed to the U.S. on similar programs – the Thai program of choice is called Overseas Ed Group. The U.S. certainly has shaky standing abroad, but to 20-something co-eds in northern Thailand, the country is still, in many ways, the dream. My students loved Kanye West, idolized Brad Pitt, and thought it was cool that President Barack Obama plays basketball. They fantasized about shopping in New York City and hoped one day to drink coffee at a Starbucks on American soil.
I watched many students get their work-study assignments and begin preparation for their time abroad. They happily daydreamed about their pending posts at Busch Gardens or Dunkin’ Donuts, and packed their English textbooks into their suitcases. They were going to learn English, make friends with real Americans, and work at what they considered to be some of the country’s most iconic companies.
They went and months later they returned, newly humbled by a heavy dose of reality. One of my students was posted at a gas station in rural Texas where he learned more Spanish than English. Two of my students worked at Busch Gardens in Virginia and earned minimum wage for cleaning up popcorn and washing dishes. Their hard-earned money went to pay for an apartment they’d been misquoted on, and they spent most of their time with other Asian exchange students who were in the same boat. As one of my students put it, “life is not easy in America.”
Many wanted to know if what they experienced was the real America; getting underpaid, paying exorbitant housing prices, and listening to Miley Cyrus on the radio. While it was certainly not the America they had been promised, it was impossible for me to look them in the eye and say what they experienced was not a very real version of American life. They entered their programs under false pretenses – a fault of the programs’ promises more than anything else – but what they learned is that the current reality is nothing like the fabled American dream, and that working in a chocolate factory has very little to do with Willy Wonka.
Daily life in America is no longer what our pop culture legacy promises, though this certainly was not the fairest way for them to find out.
Source: http://www.policymic.com/articles/3465/for-many-foreign-exchange-students-the-american-dream-becomes-a-rude-awakening
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, Flickr.
_________________________________________________________
Council For Education Travel USA No Longer Has J-1 Visa Designation
HOLBROOK MOHR and MITCH WEISS 02/02/12 06:56 PM ET
JACKSON, Miss. — A company will no longer be allowed to arrange special federal visas for foreign college students to work in the United States because the State Department – acting on complaints about poor labor conditions – has revoked the organization's certification.
Some of the students the company sponsored spent weeks protesting their working conditions at a Pennsylvania factory that packed Hershey chocolates. They complained of hard physical labor and pay deductions for rent that often left them with little money.
The non-profit Council for Education Travel USA, known as CETUSA, can no longer bring in students under the J-1 Summer Work Travel program. It is rare for the State Department to take such action. A State Department official said Thursday that the company lost its designation on Jan. 30 – nearly six months after the workers began protesting. Nearly 400 students worked at the plant.
A telephone message left for CETUSA, whose corporate office is in San Clemente, Calif., was not immediately returned. The company's website said it has sponsored tens of thousands of students from over 50 nations since 1995.
The State Department's action comes a year after an Associated Press investigation exposed widespread abuses in the J-1 program, which annually allows more than 100,000 foreign college students to work in the U.S. for up to four months.
It comes the same week that the AP obtained a Jan. 18 State Department memo proposing a major overhaul of the troubled program.
"The State Department is to be commended," said Danielle Grijalalva, executive director of the Committee for Safety of Foreign Exchange Students. "However, we will continue to look to the U.S. Department of State to make sure its sponsors adhere to the Federal Regulations which were written to protect foreign students."
The overhaul memo was written by Adam Ereli, assistant secretary for the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, to Assistant Secretary of State Ann Stock. It outlined critical and significant changes to the program, which has been a source of embarrassment for the agency. Late last year, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered a thorough review of the program.
The proposed fixes would prohibit students from working in factories, manufacturing, retail shipping and packing operations and seafood plants.
The agency also plans on "re-emphasizing the adult entertainment industry prohibition by specifically prohibiting jobs with escort services, adult book/video stores, massage parlors, and strip clubs."
Another change: Capping the number of hours a student could work at 40 – a move the agency predicted would be "by far the most controversial."
"Almost all SWT employers expect their participants to work more than a 40-hour week," Ereli wrote.
Critics say that's one of the problems with the program: Students, like the ones in Pennsylvania, are often exploited – working long hours with no overtime and forced to live in substandard housing. The AP interviewed dozens of students across the country who complained about working conditions, many in resort areas in Florida, the Carolinas and Pennsylvania.
Saket Soni, director of the National Guestworker Alliance, an advocacy group that helped the students, said in a statement that the ban is a "big win" for students and called it "a blow against the larger trend of labor recruiters and companies using guestworkers to hollow out industries and undercut wages and conditions all over America."
The AP also found that third-party brokers forced some women – mostly from Eastern European nations – to work in U.S. strip clubs.
The State Department estimates that the rule change will cut 5,000 to 8,000 jobs, of which two-thirds were "highly localized in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest."
But Ereli warned that sponsors and businesses that depend on the student labor could push back.
"The seafood packing industry and the sponsor that supply workers to the industry are making a concerted effort to oppose this prohibition," Ereli said in the memo.
The J-1 program began in 1963 as a cultural exchange. Participants must be college students in their home countries and are required to work while spending their summer breaks in the U.S. The idea was to allow them to make money and explore and learn about America in the hopes of fostering cultural understanding.
But over time, the program became as much about staffing businesses as cultural enrichment. Businesses that hire a foreign student over an American can save 8 percent because they don't have to pay Medicare, Social Security and unemployment taxes. Also, the foreigners must have their own health insurance.
Many businesses insist they need the seasonal labor during busy times, especially in resort towns. The students can be found waiting tables, flipping burgers or cleaning hotel rooms across the United States.
While working as a university English teacher in northern Thailand, many of my students headed to the U.S. on similar programs – the Thai program of choice is called Overseas Ed Group. The U.S. certainly has shaky standing abroad, but to 20-something co-eds in northern Thailand, the country is still, in many ways, the dream. My students loved Kanye West, idolized Brad Pitt, and thought it was cool that President Barack Obama plays basketball. They fantasized about shopping in New York City and hoped one day to drink coffee at a Starbucks on American soil.
In
August 2011, nearly 400 foreign students on a cultural exchange walked
off their job at a Hershey’s chocolate plant in Pennsylvania, claiming
that it was not the American experience they had signed up for. Like the
tens of thousands of other foreign students who come to the United
States every year, these Pennsylvania protestors were in the country as
part of a work-study exchange program – a means of allowing university
students from overseas to experience American life firsthand.In exchange for a few thousand dollars, these programs, often affiliated with the State Department, promise students a J-1 Visa, cultural immersion, an opportunity to practice English, and the experience of daily life in America. But, these particular students at the Hershey’s plant claimed that what they got was manual labor, a lack of cultural immersion, and paycheck deductions that hardly made up for the costs of their visas. Rick Anya, the chief executive at the Council for Educational Travel, U.S.A. – the program through which these students came – spoke with The New York Times in August saying that the council was trying to respond to the students’ complaints.
For
years now, the American dream has been losing its luster, and the
plight of these students illustrates that reality. Driven by idealistic
dreams of life in America, foreign exchange students are finding
themselves greeted instead by high costs, low wages, and dashed hopes.
By all accounts, these students were expecting more than assembly line
work and were never told their American experience would require so much
heavy lifting. Working in a chocolate factory can be easily
romanticized, and a few months in the U.S. is not a hard sell to foreign
students who have grown up on American pop culture. I’d imagine it’s
easy for the work-study programs to gloss over all the not-so-glamorous
details.While working as a university English teacher in northern Thailand, many of my students headed to the U.S. on similar programs – the Thai program of choice is called Overseas Ed Group. The U.S. certainly has shaky standing abroad, but to 20-something co-eds in northern Thailand, the country is still, in many ways, the dream. My students loved Kanye West, idolized Brad Pitt, and thought it was cool that President Barack Obama plays basketball. They fantasized about shopping in New York City and hoped one day to drink coffee at a Starbucks on American soil.
I watched many students get their work-study assignments and begin preparation for their time abroad. They happily daydreamed about their pending posts at Busch Gardens or Dunkin’ Donuts, and packed their English textbooks into their suitcases. They were going to learn English, make friends with real Americans, and work at what they considered to be some of the country’s most iconic companies.
They went and months later they returned, newly humbled by a heavy dose of reality. One of my students was posted at a gas station in rural Texas where he learned more Spanish than English. Two of my students worked at Busch Gardens in Virginia and earned minimum wage for cleaning up popcorn and washing dishes. Their hard-earned money went to pay for an apartment they’d been misquoted on, and they spent most of their time with other Asian exchange students who were in the same boat. As one of my students put it, “life is not easy in America.”
Many wanted to know if what they experienced was the real America; getting underpaid, paying exorbitant housing prices, and listening to Miley Cyrus on the radio. While it was certainly not the America they had been promised, it was impossible for me to look them in the eye and say what they experienced was not a very real version of American life. They entered their programs under false pretenses – a fault of the programs’ promises more than anything else – but what they learned is that the current reality is nothing like the fabled American dream, and that working in a chocolate factory has very little to do with Willy Wonka.
Daily life in America is no longer what our pop culture legacy promises, though this certainly was not the fairest way for them to find out.
Source: http://www.policymic.com/articles/3465/for-many-foreign-exchange-students-the-american-dream-becomes-a-rude-awakening
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, Flickr.
_________________________________________________________
Council For Education Travel USA No Longer Has J-1 Visa Designation
HOLBROOK MOHR and MITCH WEISS 02/02/12 06:56 PM ET
JACKSON, Miss. — A company will no longer be allowed to arrange special federal visas for foreign college students to work in the United States because the State Department – acting on complaints about poor labor conditions – has revoked the organization's certification.
Some of the students the company sponsored spent weeks protesting their working conditions at a Pennsylvania factory that packed Hershey chocolates. They complained of hard physical labor and pay deductions for rent that often left them with little money.
The non-profit Council for Education Travel USA, known as CETUSA, can no longer bring in students under the J-1 Summer Work Travel program. It is rare for the State Department to take such action. A State Department official said Thursday that the company lost its designation on Jan. 30 – nearly six months after the workers began protesting. Nearly 400 students worked at the plant.
A telephone message left for CETUSA, whose corporate office is in San Clemente, Calif., was not immediately returned. The company's website said it has sponsored tens of thousands of students from over 50 nations since 1995.
The State Department's action comes a year after an Associated Press investigation exposed widespread abuses in the J-1 program, which annually allows more than 100,000 foreign college students to work in the U.S. for up to four months.
It comes the same week that the AP obtained a Jan. 18 State Department memo proposing a major overhaul of the troubled program.
"The State Department is to be commended," said Danielle Grijalalva, executive director of the Committee for Safety of Foreign Exchange Students. "However, we will continue to look to the U.S. Department of State to make sure its sponsors adhere to the Federal Regulations which were written to protect foreign students."
The overhaul memo was written by Adam Ereli, assistant secretary for the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, to Assistant Secretary of State Ann Stock. It outlined critical and significant changes to the program, which has been a source of embarrassment for the agency. Late last year, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered a thorough review of the program.
The proposed fixes would prohibit students from working in factories, manufacturing, retail shipping and packing operations and seafood plants.
The agency also plans on "re-emphasizing the adult entertainment industry prohibition by specifically prohibiting jobs with escort services, adult book/video stores, massage parlors, and strip clubs."
Another change: Capping the number of hours a student could work at 40 – a move the agency predicted would be "by far the most controversial."
"Almost all SWT employers expect their participants to work more than a 40-hour week," Ereli wrote.
Critics say that's one of the problems with the program: Students, like the ones in Pennsylvania, are often exploited – working long hours with no overtime and forced to live in substandard housing. The AP interviewed dozens of students across the country who complained about working conditions, many in resort areas in Florida, the Carolinas and Pennsylvania.
Saket Soni, director of the National Guestworker Alliance, an advocacy group that helped the students, said in a statement that the ban is a "big win" for students and called it "a blow against the larger trend of labor recruiters and companies using guestworkers to hollow out industries and undercut wages and conditions all over America."
The AP also found that third-party brokers forced some women – mostly from Eastern European nations – to work in U.S. strip clubs.
The State Department estimates that the rule change will cut 5,000 to 8,000 jobs, of which two-thirds were "highly localized in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest."
But Ereli warned that sponsors and businesses that depend on the student labor could push back.
"The seafood packing industry and the sponsor that supply workers to the industry are making a concerted effort to oppose this prohibition," Ereli said in the memo.
The J-1 program began in 1963 as a cultural exchange. Participants must be college students in their home countries and are required to work while spending their summer breaks in the U.S. The idea was to allow them to make money and explore and learn about America in the hopes of fostering cultural understanding.
But over time, the program became as much about staffing businesses as cultural enrichment. Businesses that hire a foreign student over an American can save 8 percent because they don't have to pay Medicare, Social Security and unemployment taxes. Also, the foreigners must have their own health insurance.
Many businesses insist they need the seasonal labor during busy times, especially in resort towns. The students can be found waiting tables, flipping burgers or cleaning hotel rooms across the United States.
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