Vexing visas —

Editor’s note: The is the first in a series of articles about J-1 visa student workers on the central Kenai Peninsula. Next week’s story will explore the program from employers’ perspective.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

International university students working on the central Kenai Peninsula this summer paid a high price to be here — thousands of dollars to an agency to arrange their visas, plane tickets to and from their home countries, housing, local transportation, food and other living expenses.

What they expected to get in return would far outweigh the costs — adventure, travel, seeing the sights of the United States, improving their English, experiencing the American way of life. The hope is to earn enough during their three- or four-month stay to cover their expenses, fund a little travel and tourist time, and maybe even bring some money home, wherever home may be — China, Germany, Kazakhstan or Turkey, for example.

Even if they don’t come out ahead monetarily, students and their families coming up with the money see the trip as a life investment, with the value of the cultural experiences they are sure to have being a lifelong benefit to them.

For some international youth visiting the U.S. with J-1 student visas, the program works as intended. Most of their stay is spent working minimum-wage, entry-level jobs, and they take back home all the cultural experiences they’re able to squeeze in during their off-work hours.

On the central Kenai Peninsula, however, where costs are higher, infrastructure is lacking and international culture and support services are sparse, the hardships-to-benefits ratio is more easily skewed. Students have had experiences, all right, and return home with impressions of American society, but not the sorts of experiences local families stepping in to assist these students would want them to have — being stranded at the airport, walking the streets looking for a place to stay, struggling to find enough work to make ends meet, adrift in a society seemingly indifferent to their plight.

“These are the future leaders of these countries, and what are we doing to them? What are they going to think of us with the way they’ve been treated? It’s not right,” said Connie Goltz, of Soldotna.

* * * * * *

Goltz and her husband, Jay, along with several other central peninsula families, found themselves stepping in as

Photo courtesy of Connie Goltz. Annah Zhang, 20, of China, pauses for a photo by a statue of Les Anderson and his world-record king salmon in Soldotna while on a tour of town with Connie Goltz, of Soldotna. Goltz and her husband, Jay, stepped in as volunteer exchange student hosts for Zhang this summer.

impromptu international exchange student hosts this summer. After getting to know her guest, Annah Zhang, 20, of China, Goltz has expanded her self-appointed host duties into the realm of advocacy for change in the J-1 visa program.

“I was shocked to find out what’s going on. I don’t think people in the community know this is happening,” Goltz said.

She met Zhang in July. Goltz lives on Redoubt Avenue in Soldotna, and was out working in her yard when a lost-looking Zhang hesitantly approached her, and asked in polite-yet-clearly-still-learning English when the neighboring church would open.

Curiosity piqued, Goltz learned that Zhang is one of six college students here from China to work at McDonald’s in Soldotna for the summer, and was looking for a place to stay that was close to work. Someone told her churches may be able to help.

Knowing there is no hostel or similar housing for itinerants in the area, Goltz took Zhang in, as other families opened their homes to the rest of the Chinese students. The more Goltz got to know about Zhang and the program that brought her to Soldotna, the more indignant she became.

In one sense, Goltz makes for an unlikely crusader. She’s not an American citizen, though she says she’s embarrassed for how her adopted country has treated the international J-1 visa students. But she is a former exchange worker herself. She came to Soldotna in 1985 from Australia through a teacher exchange program, then met Jay, got married, was granted a green card and stayed.

“I know how people responded to me, I was an ambassador. And we were well-prepared. I think these kids came over with that hope, that they’re coming over as junior ambassadors and are going to learn something. But they’re not prepared for what happens once they get here. The company (arranging the travel) should be more forthcoming. These kids are coming with false hopes.”

Zhang and an unknown number of other international workers (no one locally or at the state level tracks such things) are here on J-1 visas, a program established by Congress in 1961 during a Cold War-era effort to improve international relations. It’s sort of the reverse equivalent of the Fulbright program that sends U.S. scholars abroad.

“It’s a cultural exchange program that’s supposed to bring students from around the world to experience American culture, have a great three or four months and then return to their home countries to win hearts and minds about what a great place America is,” said Stephen Boykewich, communications director for the National Guestworker Alliance, a New Orleans-based advocacy group for international workers in the U.S.

The J-1 is a nonimmigrant visa allowing visitors to work in a select range of jobs — au pair, factory worker, fast food and hospitality industry, for example — and travel in the U.S. for a limited period of time. To participate, visitors must apply and be approved through a designated sponsor organization that is accredited through the U.S. State Department. There are 57 such organizations listed with the State Department as facilitating J-1 summer work programs. Some have slightly different program requirements or target different groups — like Walt Disney World Co. or the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation.

Most function similarly — participants must be post-secondary students, ages 18 to somewhere in their 20s, and demonstrate proficiency with English. They pay an upfront fee (typically ranging from $3,000 to $6,000) for which the sponsor company arranges the necessary paperwork — including a temporary Social Security card and temporary medical insurance. The company also is required to monitor the visitors’ whereabouts while in the country.

Program details vary. Some companies arrange jobs and housing for the students in advance, while others leave it up to the students to coordinate such things, usually from a supplied list of employers and job openings. Most students don’t have a choice in where they’re sent or where they work, although some programs allow flexibility. Sometimes, housing and transportation to and from work are rolled into job arrangements. Many others pay out of pocket for that, as well as for food and other living expenses. All students pay for their own plane tickets to and from the U.S.

Zhang and the other Chinese women came to Soldotna through Spirit Cultural Exchange, which she found out about through a recruiter at her university. She paid $3,000 to participate, plus airfare, money to live and, hopefully, travel on while in the U.S. She was assigned to work at McDonald’s in Soldotna.

“We cannot choose that. If we say no, maybe there won’t be any other offer for us,” Zhang said. “(Upon being told she was assigned to Alaska) I was scared a little bit, excited, and finally found out that Alaska is very beautiful, and that makes me happy.”

She said she was warned that the work may be difficult or tedious and would pay minimum wage. But she also bought into an image of a rich cultural experience awaiting her in the U.S. She wanted to work on her English. She’s studying urban planning in school and hoped to see examples of big-city life in the U.S. She envisioned tours, museums and cultural attractions, seeing the sites and participating in American society.

“We are told before I come the work may be not so easy and may be hard, make me very, very tired. I just want to go and see it. New experience the most important thing. I come here for new experience and see new things and different people and different culture. And maybe we can use our spare time to go somewhere and visit something,” she said.

The Chinese students arrived in Anchorage late on a Friday in June and were to fly to Kenai, but first they needed to pick up their paperwork. They weren’t told when booking their tickets that the Social Security office isn’t open evenings and weekends. So they camped out at the Anchorage airport, with their first introduction to American culture being sleeping in waiting areas and eating out of vending machines and snack counters.

“We sleep on the chairs for three days, because there is accident because we don’t know the Social Security will not open on Saturday or Sunday,” Zhang said. “The food, the first day I come here I hate American food. In the airport it’s very disgusting. I cannot even just bite a little bit, so I just buy some fruit. That’s OK.”

Once they got their paperwork they flew to Kenai and were taken to housing prearranged by their employer — rental cabins off Echo Lake Road south of Soldotna. But once fishing season heated up, Zhang and the others were told they needed to leave to make room for pre-booked fishing clients.

Their employer suggested they stay at Kenai Landing, or another spot in Kenai, but the students were reluctant to move 10 miles or more away from work, since they were responsible for their own transportation. As it was already, the group would share rides to and from work to their housing on Echo Lake Road. But they didn’t work the same shifts so they’d all go in for the earliest shift and they’d all stay until the latest shift was over.

“Sometimes the people in McDonald’s just look at us, ‘Why we still there, before work or after work, for such long time?’ Always stay. Every day, every day, every day. But we have no choice. Otherwise we cannot go back to our home,” Zhang said.

In meeting Goltz, Zhang not only found housing within walking distance to work, she found a conduit to experiences outside of work. Her American experience to that point had been limited to McDonald’s and her lodging. She wasn’t meeting anyone else or seeing anything new beyond the confines of her sandwich-assembly station. The extent of her cultural experience was puzzling over terminology picked up from American co-workers, and resolving to work extra hard in college so she never has to work at a fast-food restaurant again.

Not that she blames any of her experience on McDonald’s. They’re just her employer. But with Spirit Cultural Exchange, she thought her $3,000 would include support while in the U.S. — someone to turn to when stranded at the airport, someone to help when housing fell through, some sort of facilitation of cultural experiences. None of that comes with the price of the program. Spirit doesn’t have any representatives in Alaska. Zhang can send emails to the company’s headquarters in Illinois, but that’s about it.

“No disrespect for McDonald’s because they are the company just for food. But I have disrespect for the cultural experience. I think it maybe something for Spirit to do, because we pay money for Spirit. I think they will give use some training or take us to somewhere or take care of us or something like that. Nothing. We didn’t even see a real person,” she said.

Goltz has been shocked at the lack of support Spirit provides the students. Zhang sent an email notifying Spirit about staying with the Goltzes, which was approved without any sort of background check, Goltz said.

“We could have been anybody,” Goltz said. “And these kids are coming from the top colleges, they’re smart cookies. Annah is very good with people. She’s very bright and very independent. But they need a mentor or someone to look out for them. Jay and I just basically picked them up off the street. They are so open. In China they’ve been brought up with people so close, there’s traffic everywhere. And because this is wide-open spaces and people say ‘Hello’ to them they are so trusting. They’re not naïve kids, but anyone could rip them off.”

Goltz has been trying to fulfill the role Zhang thought Spirit would, and a lot more. She’s taken Zhang all over the central Kenai Peninsula, on tours, to museums and other sightseeing trips. Zhang has gone fishing on the Kenai River, attended a concert and met scores of new people. Every night at dinner they work on her English — Goltz with her Australian accent and longtime Alaskan Jay deciphering slang picked up from teenagers.

“One day she walked in and said, ‘Lord have mercy. What does that mean?’ Or ‘Ain’t worth a chicken wing.’ Here we are trying to explain to her with our two different accents. Jay says it one way, I say it another,” Goltz said.

The learning has been reciprocal. The Goltzes are corresponding via email with Zhang’s parents, who have invited the Goltzes to visit China. Zhang has cooked them Chinese meals in return for them showing her that American food isn’t as bad as she first thought.

“Now I love American food. I love the dessert, the sweet things. And my first time with cheese. There’s no cheese in China, very expensive, we don’t even eat cheese, and so I love the cream cheese. That’s pretty good,” she said.

Zhang and two of the other Chinese workers will leave Soldotna on Sept. 16. Goltz has helped her arrange a stay in hostels in San Francisco, so she can get in some big-city American sightseeing before they head back to China on Oct. 1. Two of the other Chinese students took a trip to New York. The other already quit the program and went back to China. Were it not for meeting the Goltzes, Zhang might have been tempted to do the same.

“Very lucky to find them. I think if I have not meet them, maybe I have not so many experiences here. It’s not worth it to come here just for work. Connie take me so many places and bring a lot of friends to me. They give me new experiences, too,” Zhang said.

Goltz said that the people Zhang has met have been friendly, welcoming and supportive all of their free volition, unlike the company to which Zhang paid $3,000.

“They are very verbal that what’s happened with the big company does not reflect the American people. That’s what a lot of people expressed independently, ‘Please don’t think of this country as what that company did,’” Goltz said.

* * * * * *

Danette Howland met her unexpected summer guests in much the same way as Goltz. She was out working in her yard

Photos courtesy of Danette Howland. The Howland family, of Kenai, took in four university students from Kazakhstan — Mura, Olzhas, Den and Nursultan — this summer. There were here to work at a cannery as part of the J-1 student visa program. Danette Howland is seated at left, and daughter, Keeley Boyle, is at right.

in Old Town Kenai when a group of neatly dressed, polite young men approached her.

“You could tell they were from a foreign country because they had really nice shoes,” Howland said, relating what would become a running joke over the summer — people complimenting the students on their footwear. “These guys, it’s not like some kids who say, ‘Oh, we’re going to Alaska, we’re going to live on the beach in a tent.’ These guys did not come prepared for that.”

They said they were from Kazakhstan, here to work at Salamatof Seafoods for the summer, and were looking for a place to stay. Did she know of any affordable apartments to rent?

“They didn’t have a phone. I started helping them make phone calls because, with the language barrier, I couldn’t figure our how they would even communicate on the phone,” Howland said.

They had come from a failed two-week attempt to work in the hospitality industry in New Jersey, but they weren’t earning enough to cover living expenses. The J-1 sponsor program they went through — costing $3,500 each — allows them to select jobs and locations from a supplied list, including Salamatof Seafoods. In Kenai, they started out staying in a hotel they couldn’t afford.

“We looked for another two or three days for an apartment before it became really apparent that there’s no place willing to rent month to month,” Howland said.

Howland and her husband, John, invited a group of four students to stay in their basement — Mura, Olzhas, Den and Nursultan (Editor’s note: last names not given), ages 19 to 21. One is studying computers and technology, one geography, one tourism and marketing, and the other physics. Three more students from Kazakhstan arrived in the neighborhood shortly thereafter, and Howland helped set them up with a neighbor.

At first, in June, before the sockeye run arrived and fish processing ramped up, the students were afraid work in Alaska would be as sparse as it had been in New Jersey.

“They worried and worried and worried. They were constantly worrying, ‘Why is there no work?’ They would go to Salamatof every morning and they would be so disappointed when they’d be sent home. They were going around asking if anyone had work. And I kept trying to assure them the fish were coming and you’ll have more work than you know what to do with. I think they really needed the money,” Howland said.

Covering expenses was proving difficult.

“I don’t think that they had a lot of money, and I don’t think they totally knew how they were going to be getting back and things like that,” Howland said. “One of them asked, ‘How much would a car like that cost here?’ It was an old Subaru, probably worth $2,000 to $3,000 in our country. They said, ‘That would be $300 in Kazakhstan.’ I don’t think any of them came from wealth at all,” Howland said.

Still, they insisted on paying for lodging. Howland said it was clear they were uncomfortable staying for free.

“They kept looking in their translation book and saying, ‘Ashamed. We’d be ashamed.’ So I said $25 a month for each of them. And they paid promptly, one month to the day. I’d completely forgotten we’d made the deal,” Howland said.

The young men were quickly enfolded into the Howland family and extended circle of friends. Their new community rounded up bicycles for transportation and rubber boots and warmer gear to wear at the fish plant, since they didn’t know to bring such things with them.

The language barrier kept communication from being as in-depth as the family would have liked, Howland said, but they still integrated immediately into the household, hanging out with her kids, joining discussions around the dinner table, a 21st birthday party for Den, and periodic bursts of laughter erupting from the basement that never failed to make Howland smile. They even started calling her “mom.”

“It didn’t take long interacting with them to know it was a very comfortable fit,” she said. “They were just very warm

The Howland family and their four summer guests.

and very gracious and very grateful, goodness. They just were so, so happy to have help, I think,” Howland said. “They brought so much to the house. They’re some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. They’ve known each other since they were 7 and the way that they treated each other, and treated everyone else, they were just so kind.”

When work picked up at the cannery, they happily put in as many hours as they could, up to 14- to 16-hour days. But when the sockeye run receded and hours dwindled in August, they decided they needed to head to another job, this time in Ohio, before heading home.

Howland stayed in touch via email. They didn’t even need to address the messages to her as “Mom” for her protective instincts to kick in.

“I care a lot about them, but also I have not really tried to pry into, like, ‘What are you eating and where are you staying?’ All these kinds of things I would love to know — or maybe I wouldn’t love to know,” Howland said. “When they got to Ohio the emails were pretty stressed out for a while. They said, ‘Here we cannot earn all the money spent on transportation, living expenses and meals.’”

They originally planned on leaving the U.S. on Sept. 20, but moved that up to Sept. 9, given how difficult their stay in the country had been.

Even so, Howland said they seemed to at least enjoy their time in Kenai. She wished they had stayed longer, and she may get that wish next year. They told her they want to return, now that they’ve learned — the hard way, though softened by the luck of meeting the Howlands — what to expect of a J-1 experience.

“There was so much that I thought we would get to do, but with work it was hard,” she said. “For all the craziness of this experience they are all determined to come back next year. I’m hoping that now they know what’s ahead and will be better prepared,” she said.