July 4, 2008
Foreign workers struggle to live
JAMES CITY -- Ivan Ivanov has been stranded four times already in America.
The first was in the airport in Washington after his girlfriend's luggage got lost. On his second night, the luggage was still lost.
His first night in Williamsburg, the 21-year-old business student was stranded. He and his girlfriend had found a hotel room for a steep $330 a week.
An American named Shawn gave him and his girlfriend a ride to another motel, one they hoped they could afford.
The second motel charged $300, Ivanov said. Dejected, he and his girlfriend stood outside the lobby, tired from flights, lost luggage, and being 10,000 miles away from home with nowhere to go and only a contract to work at IHOP.
They were among any number of foreign students who arrive every 90 days in Williamsburg only to find little or no help getting settled. Only in a crisis does officialdom step in.
Two Bulgarians were passing on the street. Ivanov called to them.
"Hey, how are you?" he asked the couple. "Would you like to live with us?"
All four moved into one of the $300/week rooms, until they were thrown out for partying. Ivonov disputed the accusation.
For any traveler, the thought of being stranded in a foreign country is terrifying. It is indeed scary, Ivanov said, but he counts himself fortunate. He has a credit card, no small feat in Bulgaria. And while he's had to depend on the kindness of strangers, there has been no short supply of kind strangers.
Not every J-1 Visa student has had his luck, such as it is. Students tell stories of piling six, seven or eight people into a motel room just to get by financially.
"There's two on the floor, four in the beds, luggage everywhere," said Zarica Vateva, 26, who first came from Bulgaria on a J-1 Visa, returned on a work visa and married an American in February. "That's normal."
They tell stories of sleeping under bridges, in bus stations, in patches of woods. In short, in all the lonely places that American homeless sleep.
This isn't the tidy world of the well-managed Busch Gardens program at the International Housing Village. These young adults live at the whimsy of motel managers, with no help from the placement agencies that helped land them jobs and led them through visa processing.
Instead they are left with their own resourcefulness, their ability to band together in small communities, weighing cost against security in a foreign land.
For Ivanov, that translates into a near-constant worry about his girlfriend. "The two Russian girls last year
" he said, about the unsolved abduction and attack in July 2006 of two 19-year-old J-1 students. "I'm worried about the girl I'm with. She doesn't go alone in America, never. Only with people that I trust and I know."
According to social workers, time has smoothed the path for J-1 students working their 90-day gigs.
"It's been quiet," said Peter Walentisch, director of Human Services for the City of Williamsburg, which responds to students on a crisis basis. "I was surprised at the lack of issues. As each year progresses, it seems to be working itself out. The key is safety and security."
Walentisch said police and local government have been taking a more active role in seeing to the welfare of the young foreigners. A number of families have also discussed a host-family program in the city, he said.
Despite the progress, the annual influx of J-1 students has caused concern that nobody is watching out for them. There is simply no clearinghouse where students can go for basic housing, transportation or health information.
Copyright © 2008, The Virginia Gazette
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