Too bad Judge Stephen G. Breyer didn’t know about the U.S. government’s “Nannies for Yuppies” employment agency. If he had, he might have had a better chance of being the next U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Similarly, if Zoe Baird or Kimba Wood had known about it, either one of them could have been attorney general, and Janet Reno would still be in Miami.
While the White House hit team was purging the travel office, no one dared lay a hand on the government’s child care employment agency, which does a land-office business supplying full-time, tax-exempt babysitters to wealthy Americans.
And who runs this employment agency, you ask? The Immigration and Naturalization Service of the Justice Department? The Labor Department? Would you believe the U.S. Information Agency – which explains America to foreign audiences through the Voice of America and other programs – also runs the overseas nanny trade?
Why the USIA? As part of its mandate, it handles educational and cultural exchanges, although washing dishes and changing diapers would hardly fit into this category.
According to former USIA associate director, Ronald Trowbridge, who was close to the program, “Thousands of people, and I’m talking about high rollers, were flouting immigration laws by getting child care this way.”
The Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961, established so-called J-visas, to enable non-immigrant “bona fide students” to come from abroad to study here and to participate in educational and cultural activities, to “increase mutual understanding” between countries. Teachers, resident scholars and others are also included.
And so, oddly enough, are au pairs. In fact, an immigrant does not require certification from the Labor Department to work full-time in the United States under a J-visa. And although au pair girls (and they usually are girls), are permitted to receive wages for babysitting and housecleaning, their “employers” or “host families” do not need to pay Social Security taxes or fill our IRS W-2 employment forms, which Zoe Baird and Stephen Breyer failed to do.
The real reason the nannies come through the USIA is because sponsoring groups want it that way. They reap millions by keeping it in an agency that doesn’t want it and monitors the program very loosely. According to the General Accounting Office, the USIA has not adequately monitored the J-visa program, including the nannies, their sponsors and host families.
The cultural J-visas also restricts the au pairs to Europe. Moving it to another visa category and expanding the program to other parts of the world would provide competition to sponsors, who hired high-priced lobbyists last year to defeat a bill that would have transferred the au pairs to INS in the Justice Department, where regulators would likely have killed the program. Fate plays funny games. Zoe Baird or Kimba Wood could have been in charge of the nannies for yuppies program.
The USIA processes almost 3,000 au pairs each year to provide child care. They must be between the ages of 18 and 25 and can stay for 12 months. The system works this way. There are eight “sponsor” organizations certified by the USIA that have affiliate offices throughout Europe. Au pair candidates are screened overseas, and the U.S. sponsor tries to match up the candidate with the right family, with the USIA overseeing the program. The sponsor is paid by the host family, which also pays the nanny $100 a week plus room and board. Nannies can work up to 45 hours per week. The Labor Department says a 40-hour week constitutes full-time employment, and other government officials believe this is a work program that circumvents immigration regulations.
To USIA’s credit, it tried but failed to convince Congress that au pairs should work less than 40 or 45 hours a week and that a cultural component should be part of the au pair experience. The USIA rightfully protests that it should not be in charge of a full-time work program for nannies. The government’s foreign information agency has enough trouble trying to define its mission abroad in a world devoid of the familiar communist enemy.
Congress has played fast and loose on immigration matters. It also approved Q-visas several years ago, which enabled thousands of young people from Europe to work full-time at Disney World. Nannies for hire is also a work program, feebly wrapped in a cultural package. Those who participate in it should ante up their taxes, especially the nonprofit, fax-exempt au pair agencies that spend a lot of their overhead on high-priced lobbyists and national advertising.
Congress doesn’t want to touch it. President Clinton has the authority to conduct the government’s foreign exchange activities, and he can put an end to this hoax by executive order.
c. The Washington Post, June 27, 1993