Exchange Student Servitude
JARVIS, MICHAELA
Exchange Student Servitude They come to learn about the United States but never get off the farm BY MICHAELA JARVIS The son of a farmer, A.J. was twenty-four years old when he heard through the...
...Former directors earned just more than the minimum wage, according to former employee Kunio Ishii, and the trainees were paid the same wages as American workers, according to former Farm Bureau president Allen Grant...
...When he asked his boss a few questions about health risks that might be associated with the chemicals he was using, his boss got annoyed...
...They should learn something about us...
...Hi-rayama was a virtual prisoner last year on a dusty flower farm in Salinas...
...The smell in the dank, low-ceilinged barn is overpowering at first...
...I wouldn't want to take on that responsibility...
...knew he was being exposed to them for about three hours each week...
...Perks shared by Fukuda, McNulty, and the agency's third paid employee amounted to $22,030 in 1992, plus a travel budget of $109,950...
...Are we closely monitoring any particular sponsor...
...Hederson Portela looks to be on the point of exhaustion as he finishes up the milking...
...Don't you understand me?' he'd shout," Fonseca says...
...One throws a fast kick with a rear hoof at the eighteen-year-old worker, who dodges it...
...They found that it was my fault I fought with my boss," he says...
...One might argue that they are.* Michaela Jarvis is on the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle, which published a shorter version of this article...
...The young Brazilian never even saw a doctor while working on the farm...
...A thin young man straddles the gutter that catches the animals' manure and urine and struggles under each cow to attach the vacuum pipes of a milking machine to their udders...
...He never said, 'We use this chemical for X.' I hardly had a chance to even talk to him...
...The next day, the farmer and his wife announced that, from then on, Fonseca would be working for food only, that they were no longer going to pay IFAA $655 a month, and that the trainee would therefore not get his $110 a month...
...When I was a little girl, I watched television, and most of what we saw was American films—practically 90 percent...
...I studied three years, and now because of this farmer, I might not get my diploma...
...Alves abandoned his traineeship before it was over, after about eight months...
...I promise to you that when I go back to my country, I will tell to everybody what they really will find here and after all if they want to come, I just can say good luck...
...was twenty-four years old when he heard through the agricultural school he'd attended in Sao Paulo, Brazil, about an opportunity to work at a farm in the United States...
...It's a dream to come here," says Hirayama, whose parents grow soy beans in southeastern Brazil...
...We have people who come to this country who think it's made of gold," he says, "and they want something different than they've agreed to...
...taxpayers and are part of our foreign policy, little attention has been paid to them...
...His mother took action, going to visit the headmaster of her son's vocational school, where Portela had signed up to come to the United States...
...As it turned out," A.J...
...We're in correspondence through letters, telephone calls, faxes...
...Meanwhile, IFAA trains its Brazilian interns to put up with overwork and ill treatment...
...When Portela called his parents in the state of Parana, Brazil, and told them he was spending all his waking hours in a milking barn, that he had gone fifty days without leaving the farm even once, and that he wasn't being exposed to American culture except as it pertained to the rear half of a cow, they were incensed...
...In the end, I was the villain of the story...
...Rutz calls Methomyl "nerve poison," because it inhibits the production of a chemical important to nerve transmission...
...He saw it as a chance to bring new methods of growing crops and raising animals back to Brazil—and help make himself a better life...
...If Mr...
...The trainees come regardless of what they are told...
...Unfortunately, Burcham doesn't always seem to know what is going on within his agency...
...Sure enough, the coordinator of International Farmers Aid Association gave Portela a call and told him to hang on until the trainee seminar, which was coming up in a couple of weeks...
...arrived in Salinas, he says, "There were three farmers waiting for us...
...Hitt says USIA's "interest is in protecting the integrity of the program, protecting the participants, and being sure they go home with something more than they came with...
...Too slow...
...When A.J...
...As he and his manager drove to the farm, A.J...
...Twenty-five-year-old Hirayama says the tales of former trainees at the orientation pale in comparison to the lifelong propaganda job Hollywood does on young people in Third World countries...
...Then one day, the trainee blew up at his hosts...
...the testing disqualified a few candidates in last year's group...
...asked if he would learn about agronomy—the study of agricultural production and the treatment of the soil—and the manager just laughed...
...In the case of at least two of these USIA-approved agencies, the one or two people who run them pay themselves handsome salaries—as much as $90,000 a year, plus generous travel allowances and other expensive perks...
...A.J., who has asked to be identified only by his initials, didn't come to the United States by sneaking across the Rio Grande...
...Everyone tells him what to do, though, including the sixteen-year-old girl who works part-time, as well as the farmer's children...
...Government-sanctioned exchange program known as Worldwide Farmers Exchange, based in Albany, California...
...The money host farmers pay to the private, USIA-approved exchange agencies can run as low as $2 an hour per trainee, or about $650 a month...
...Moreover, the lure of coming to the United States is inestimably strong...
...I thought American people wasn't lying but I was wrong . . . and every time that we contact your association by letter or by telephone, we don't receive answers...
...Fukuda, who is the organizer of IFAA, doesn't give me an authorized letter saying I was a good trainee, I won't receive my diploma...
...He helped run the trainee program that was the organizational predecessor of IFAA and Worldwide...
...Learning how to grow roses for China to begin exporting to Japan was the lure...
...The rest of the day he works in the barn, milking the herd a second time, and cleaning stalls until well into the evening...
...There's no extra money in the program," says Burcham...
...Although these programs are funded by U.S...
...You dream, and you come here.' She ended up a virtual prisoner on a flower farm in Salinas...
...We just wanted to bring in extra help...
...You expect them to learn so that when you ask him to get a piece of machinery, he gets it...
...Well, I didn't understand, so he'd just yell, all the time, from the first day I was there...
...Trainees working in hotels, restaurants, and management positions, who tend to be from industrialized countries, also tend to be paid at least the minimum wage of $4.35 an hour...
...Sometimes, he says, he could taste the spray...
...Most nona-gricultural trainees say they think coming to the United States was a valuable experience for them...
...began saving the products' labels...
...A Wisconsin host farmer agrees that US...
...Unfortunately, Portela was issued a sort of demerit at the seminar, for supposedly throwing water on some Japanese trainees...
...During their stay in the United States, they were threatened, lied to, and abused...
...When I talk to Hideaki [a twenty-two-year-old Japanese trainee] about Michael Jackson and all this business about whether he's a child molester or not, Hideaki's up on all that...
...She says Fonseca "was probably a seventeen-year-old brat...
...Those were not the rules of the game," Alves says...
...General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, published a report on exchange trainee programs importing foreigners as cheap labor...
...She says USIA responds to any complaints "that come to us...
...He characterizes the relationship between the hosts and trainees as "training them as you would train your own son or daughter...
...In fact, when the young visitors are stooped over the boss's crops or crouched beneath the udders of his animals day after day, when trainees are ordered out of bed in the dark before anyone else gets up and made to work in the evenings after the regular employees go home, when they are spoken to disrespectfully or not at all and lodged in dank basements and broken-down trailers, when they are singled out to do the dangerous jobs and paid a pittance, then the ambiguity over whether the trainees are student interns or just hired help seems like a ridiculous, but crafty, bureaucratic invention...
...Also, by the time they get here, their pride is involved...
...But he thinks most trainees from Third World countries are willing to come here regardless of the conditions...
...farms for one year, to learn about American agriculture and the American way of life...
...Under such an arrangement, a trainee can end up making as little as $110 It's a dream to come here...
...In 1992, the director of the agency, Akira Fukuda, paid himself $83,555, and the office manager, Chris McNulty, made $49,680...
...I think the coordinator [of IFAA] sent that letter to keep me here...
...Many wish they had never come...
...But those days are gone...
...When I mention CHF1IS FERRANTEILO The Progressive / 27 Madonna, he says, 'Oh, Madonna...
...Phoned later and asked about the encounter with the dog, the farmer's wife, Shirley Vohs, said, "No, I wouldn't trust him either...
...When I was a little girl, I always dreamed of Disneyland, the Grand Canyon...
...Fonseca was examined, sent home, and his life on the farm continued as before...
...These are things that stay in your head...
...Some months later Heinrich Vohs, the farmer who hosted Fonseca, stood just outside his barn raking up some loose hay in the rain, and hardly looked up when interviewed...
...Fukuda and McNulty declined to be interviewed for this story...
...When I got to the farm, it was 'just do it, do it, work.' There wasn't one day that the farmer explained anything to me...
...Are the trainees being taught about an American way of doing things...
...Bur-cham was counsel for the California Farm Bureau between 1965 and 1972 and then between 1977 and 1983...
...Worldwide receives about $4,000 a year per trainee...
...Burcham says it's the trainees' fault if they are dissatisfied...
...During his first few months on the fifty-cow dairy farm, Fonseca says he exhausted himself working twelve- to fifteen-hour days, with no day off...
...When I had the opportunity, I took it...
...I couldn't stay standing, so I sat down...
...Too slow...
...Thomas Burcham is its president...
...For each fifteen- to eighteen-hour day, he makes about $4.50...
...I was waiting answer by more than one month but nothing happened . . . For us it's not much important because we are farmers in our country too and here we work like a slave we have no hour to finish work and no all day off too...
...Speaking with his back turned, he said to go see his wife in the house, which was about fifty yards up a driveway from the barn...
...I'm not sure that's not just a way to explain why they're bringing them over here...
...But most of the seventy-five or so agricultural trainees interviewed for this article had a very different story to tell...
...But, says Louie, "Our intention was not to teach them how to grow roses in China...
...Burcham is reassuring about Worldwide's management and says "less than 5 percent" of its trainees quit early...
...According to records filed with the IRS, IFAA paid top dollar for all its office equipment...
...Being eighteen, Brazilian, and male, Portela would rather lose a limb than break down in front of a female reporter, but he comes close as he talks about the brutal existence he has endured for seven months on the Bohnhoff Dairy Farm, about seventy miles north of Milwaukee...
...Portela speaks very little English—just a few series of words essential to his survival: "go truck field," or "cows finish milk"—and no one at the farm bothers to help him out...
...Along with Ovidiu Diaconescu, a colleague at the Farm Bureau, Burcham started Worldwide in 1984...
...He was not smuggled in in a truck or the hold of a ship...
...Julio Yutaka Shirahata, a twenty-one-year-old Japanese Brazilian trainee who was in this country two years ago, says one former trainee at his orientation told of breaking an arm while on his host farm and being required to continue working...
...The orientation helped prepare us psychologically for what we would encounter here," she says...
...They're not going to go home and admit they were prostituting...
...Then he took the rest of the day off...
...And he says any problems that come up are investigated and that trainees have been taken out of situations the agency found unacceptable...
...For those who come through San Francisco, I try to go to the final program and present them with their certificates," he says...
...All of Worldwide's revenue comes from the money earned by the trainees and paid by the host farmers...
...In fact, none of the trainees interviewed has ever met Burcham at any final program or anywhere else...
...They put me on a difficult farm because they know I am from a school that will punish me if I don't complete the program," Portela says...
...says, "all he cared about was that I get the worst jobs done as quickly as possible, and all the wife of the owner did was shoo us along and say, 'Go, go, you're working too slow...
...The seminars are intended as perks for the trainees and to help satisfy the educational requirements of their programs...
...I didn't come to America to be an underpaid worker...
...In other recent years, the agency bought new Nissan Sentras, a $1,300 car phone, and "furniture" to the tune of about $1,300 a year—though the sitting-area furniture in its small office looks like 1970s-era leftovers from someone's home...
...We grew up with this from the time we were very young...
...Trainees from Third World or developing countries were most likely to suffer mistreatment...
...The money is spent on the exchange farmers...
...When she reported back to her son that she had been received very respectfully and that the headmaster seemed concerned, Portela says he breathed a sigh of relief, figuring he would soon be able to change farms...
...It's unbelievable, and I can't do anything about it...
...One of his duties at the farm he was assigned to—Dairokuno Greenhouse flower farm in Salinas, California—was spraying the carnations in the greenhouse with chemicals...
...Even so, only a small portion of the $650 a month actually goes to the trainee, after the private agencies take out administrative costs, including the money administrators pay themselves...
...on a Sunday in early October, and fifty-five cows stand side-by-side in railed slots, like cars in a parking lot...
...Thomas Burcham, president of Worldwide Farmers Exchange, says some of the rules USIA has regarding trainee-exchange programs came from a meeting he had with the agency in 1973, "when we told them how we run our program...
...He also says its host farmers actively teach the trainees and are genuinely interested in international exchange...
...She was not allowed to get phone calls, she learned no English because the owners were Japanese and her coworkers Mexican, and she spent her off hours in a shabby trailer surrounded by a junkyard of abandoned farming equipment...
...One day, he almost fainted in the barn...
...Before he went back to Brazil, Fonseca says, IFAA took the side of the farmer...
...At least six days a week, Portela rises in the dark at 4:00 a.m...
...A letter was sent to his headmaster, and Portela was threatened with the loss of his diploma...
...Fonseca worked for a week under these conditions before complaining to IFAA and being moved to another farm...
...So at the end of a long day of hot, back-breaking labor, during which the program administrator drives around in his company car chatting on his cellular phone, hobnobs with Government officials in Washington, or travels abroad—activities all paid for out of the money brought in by the trainees—the individual trainee might be paid less than $4...
...farms...
...Janet Louie, whose family hosted Chinese trainees for three years through Worldwide Farmers Exchange at Green Valley Floral in Salinas, says the training their charges were supposed to get was never a possibility...
...He yelled at them, telling them in his broken English that he was tired of being treated like a slave...
...American farm hands, by comparison, can make upwards of $1,600 a month, plus benefits...
...The administrators of the exchange programs say the education trainees get while in this country renders moot the issue of the money they receive...
...During their one-year stays in the United States, agricultural trainees of IFAA and Worldwide Farmers Exchange usually get together for two five-day seminars, with visits to other farms and sightseeing at tourist attractions—Disneyland or the like, depending on what regions they're living in...
...I always dreamed in English class of Sequoia National Park, the Grand Canyon...
...According to tax records, Worldwide paid Burcham $32,400 in 1991 for the five to ten hours per week he says he puts in...
...It's like someone who leaves his hometown and goes to a life of prostitution...
...I started to tremble, I felt light-headed, and I started to panic...
...The young college graduate spent his first few weeks on a dairy farm in Han-ford, California, picking up rocks in the fields...
...Then he eats a snack of leftovers from the meal he had at noon and goes back to his basement bedroom to catch some sleep before getting up to do it all over again...
...So far, nothing has come of the letters, which were sent in October...
...One was from an insecticide that lists Methomyl as its main ingredient—a compound so poisonous that, for twenty years, the state of California has required that workers using it be placed under medical supervision and have blood tests every sixty days...
...Soon, he says, he discovered Worldwide "was there to serve itself and the farmers—because Worldwide would get the money and the farmers would get the work...
...A few dozen USIA-approved exchange programs are in the business of importing nonprofessional practical trainees to work in industries ranging from agriculture to auto mechanics...
...It appears that several thousand participants are involved...
...If I don't stay here, I'll lose my diploma, which will be a big failure for me...
...You dream, and you come here...
...Rodrigo Fonseca, seventeen and from the same school as Portela, says his sixty-four-year-old host farmer in Whitehall, Wisconsin, constantly lost his temper because Fonseca didn't understand his directions in English...
...The trainees pay about $350 for an orientation that takes place before they even leave Brazil...
...Although he was unfamiliar with the names of the pesticides, A.J...
...Phoned again after Fonseca had been interviewed extensively, Shirley Vohs said she didn't want to give her side of the story and hung up...
...He was okay on chores, but he couldn't understand about the machinery because he couldn't understand English...
...Is Madonna on TV?' For them to be in the culture where all this is happening is just incredible for them...
...Shirahata says the orientation leaders did not contradict or comment on this...
...The report blames USIA for the failings: "USIA lacks adequate information on participant activities, does not enforce requirements that program sponsors provide periodic information on participant activities, has no systematic process to monitor sponsors' and participants' activities, and does not adequately coordinate the program internally or with other agencies having visa responsibilities...
...Fonseca says the farmer punched him during two of these outbursts...
...The boss told me to go in the house, and took me to the hospital...
...A $500,000 grant made to the program several years ago sits in the bank collecting interest...
...As the machine slurps rhythmically, some of the cows become less than cooperative and have to be slapped on the haunches to get them on their feet again...
...The German shepherd blocked the way to the small white bungalow, running back and forth from the front door to the side door, growling and barking at each step of an approaching stranger...
...That's the whole point of exchange...
...But the trainees are often put to work with little or no instruction and perform the same low-skill tasks day after day...
...After visiting workplaces hosting trainees, the GAO concluded, "Some training consisted primarily of employment in commercial enterprises with no cultural or educational emphasis placed on the participants' activities...
...According to Roy Rutz, a program supervisor for the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, the chemical A.J...
...It's unbelievable, and I can't do anything about it.' In 1990, Cassio Antonio Alves, then twenty-four, was allowed a year's leave from his agricultural job with the Brazilian government to come to the United States through Worldwide Farmers Exchange...
...In fact, several of the eight or so programs that import agricultural trainees each year—which bring in an average of 100 foreigners at a time—recruit them from economically desperate countries and send them home hurt, angry, disillusioned, and even injured...
...Asked how he could observe the trainees' progress when none of the trainees or former trainees interviewed for this article has ever met him, Burcham admits he often meets trainees, if at all, as they are leaving the country...
...They answer his tentative English with quick bursts of slang, demonstrating their unquestioned assumption that he is not worth their time...
...only two or three dropped out of the orientation last year...
...It's 5:00 p.m...
...Asked whether she thinks young foreign trainees stuck out on private farms with minimal English skills are unlikely to make complaints, Hitt says, "I'm not aware that the participants are in a disadvantaged situation...
...I studied three years, and now because of this farmer, I might not receive my diploma...
...Asked whether the barking dog outside the house was friendly, Vohs sneered over his shoulder, "Yeah, sure...
...pop culture is a big lure for trainees...
...a month, which can work out to as little as thirty cents an hour...
...Acopy of a letter is found in a drawer in a trailer, left behind by a trainee housed there: "This is a simple letter, but I'll try to write all my feelings and disappointment about you and your association...
...Hitt says...
...USIA has the power to revoke a program sponsor's ability to operate, but none of the programs is currently suspected of wrongdoing...
...Although USIA responded to the GAO report by beefing up its reporting regulations for program sponsors, Hitt notes that USIA still does not conduct site visits to trainee workplaces and does not meet with the trainees themselves, communicating only with the people who head the trainee programs...
...The issue of his being transferred to another farm was dropped...
...He flew here with a group of young Brazilians to participate in a U.S...
...we don't do any policing...
...And by the time they get here, having spent their life savings on a plane ticket, they have to put up with whatever comes their way...
...was exposed to is "one of the most toxic pesticides we have registered" with the Environmental Protection Agency and the state of California...
...Go back home.'" Some farmers—on flower farms, dairy farms, and other types of agricultural operations—are candid about why they host trainees: not because they have any interest in the exchange of knowledge or culture with young foreigners, but solely because the trainees are cheap...
...The letter was addressed to Worldwide Farmers Exchange of Albany, California...
...He says complaints arise only when trainees are greedy about what they deserve...
...for the morning milking, while everyone else on the farm is still sleeping...
...Fonseca, too, risks losing his diploma...
...As a result of this and the lack of [USIA] control over the program, it has spread beyond its original intent and is 'potentially out of control.'" International Farmers Aid Association is one of the agencies that sends foreign trainees to work on U.S...
...Some nights he works until 10:00 p.m...
...Mary Hitt, who retired in January after seven years as USIA's director of Exchange Visitor Program Services, says USIA is unaware of any trainees being abused or exploited, despite the GAO report and USIA's own review, which said USIA oversight lacked "sufficient definition to prevent work programs, under the guise of training, from being conducted...
...They know that if they leave the program, they lose their visa...
...I always dreamed of Disneyland, Universal Studios...
...There were all kinds of experiences that were told about—good and bad," says former trainee Marcia Hirayama...
...They said, 'I'll take that one'—like we were animals...
...For good reason: Those who drop out forfeit the cost...
...GAO investigators said William Stuart, acting director of USIA's Office of General Counsel, told them the trainee programs were "controlled from the outside by strong, professional, private" agencies...
...For years, he says, "there were no rules—that's one of the interesting things about this...
...He explains why in his native Portuguese, his voice cracking, his hands trembling, his face flushing...
...After Hitt was interviewed, USIA sent letters to Worldwide and IFAA because trainees interviewed for this article alleged they were mistreated, according to William Reinckens, an agency spokesman...
...The programs are intended to foster education and affection among nations...
...USIA by and large would grant approvals to programs, and then you'd never hear from them again, although in the last few years they started having some regulations and rules and standards...
...and his classmates were invited to stay on U.S...
...The trainees say they are required to submit to psychological testing to make sure they are "strong enough to bear the experience of coming to the United States...
...The only money that isn't is the money that's paid to staff, and it ain't generous...
...They are introduced to former trainees, some of whom tell horror stories...
...She set foot inside her host's home twice in seven months—once when she was asked to "guard" the house while the owners were away at a wedding...
...Located in Pleasant Hill, California, it files tax returns justifying its status as a nonprofit, charitable corporation as a provider of "general training with qualified farmers to learn American agricultural science, methodology, and sociology," stating that this on-the-job training is "specifically planned to instruct trainees in leadership and training roles...
...The answer is no...
...More than 10,000 foreigners—mostly teenagers and young adults—come to this country each year as practical trainees and stay for up to eighteen months...
...They will do anything just to say, T was in America.' A lot of the people who come are very simple people...
...IFAA's predecessor organization was founded in 1957 and overseen by the California Farm Bureau and the University of California...
...The United States Information Agency oversees these programs, granting them permission to operate and obtain entrance visas for the trainees...
...We talk with the sponsors when they're here in Washington," Hitt says...
...In February 1990, the U.S...
Vol. 59 • February 1995 • No. 2
