Every year, 20,000 young adults — most of them women — come to the United States to work as au pairs through a State Department program that grants them a temporary J-1 visa in exchange for providing child care for host families.
The department authorizes private companies to contract with these young people and charge them thousands of dollars in fees to cover their placement and provide assistance while they are in the U.S. But many of these au pairs say they were placed in abusive and exploitative situations, and that neither the companies nor the State Department stepped in to help. A HuffPost and Government Accountability Project investigation looked at thousands of pages of State Department documents, surveyed 125 au pairs and spoke to more than 40 current and former employees of au pair companies.
Reporter Zack Kopplin found that many allege having experienced abuse, threats or other mistreatment. Must Reads talked to Zack about his findings.
What prompted you to look into the au pair program?
I first started investigating the au pair program in mid-2016. My social circle included a few people who were au pairs, and I was invited to a birthday party for one, where she was mistreated by her hosts during her own party. It was a screwed-up situation, but she asked us not to interfere because it would have just made things worse.
As a journalist, I had serious questions about the program and started reaching out, through my network, for people who would tell me their stories. That led to an article for Politico Magazine in early 2017. But that article was incomplete, and I knew it. It only covered the program through anecdotal experiences, and in investigative journalism, it’s important to show how abuse happens systemically, rather than because of individual bad behavior. The program’s bones needed to be exposed and they reveal an industry, warped by flawed financial incentives, that fails to address systemic abuse and protects abusers.
How did you go about getting the State Department documents?
I found a few documents through a public database of records that the State Department had previously released, but to obtain the rest of the documents, I had to use the Freedom of Information Act. I requested the copies of complaints made to a State Department hotline and annual reports from au pair companies.
After about a year of waiting, with no results, I sued the government to force it to produce records. My lawyer, Josh Burday at Loevy & Loevy, reached an agreement with the State Department to produce 500 pages of records a month.
The documents you got are really informative, but also limited. What other information did you try to get from State that you weren't able to get?
The State Department didn’t provide records from any year other than 2016. Instead, they sent me thousands of pages where they withheld the actual program information as a corporate trade secret.
Obviously, abuse complaints in a government program aren’t a trade secret. But challenging the government’s redactions is a later part of the process in my lawsuit, and the State Department still owes me unreleased records.
How did you track down former au pairs who were willing to share their stories?
The main way was through Facebook. Au pairs frequently exchange contact information as part of the process to find host families, and several au pair groups also passed around my contact information for anyone who wanted to talk to me.
After a few dozen interviews, word got around that I was a safe person to talk to.
What do you hope readers take away from this investigation?
This story’s most important readers are parents who hired an au pair or are considering hiring one.
Over the last few years, I’ve had host parents contact me about hiring an au pair ethically. My personal opinion is that it can’t be done, but my advice is always the same: If you hire an au pair, pay fair wages — above $4.35 an hour — and understand the incredible vulnerability that comes with the fact that au pairs live with you.
Beyond this, I think there needs to be an examination of the program on the part of Americans who participate in some way or lobby for it.
Child care is completely unaffordable in America, and this makes au pairs an attractive option. And the supposed justification for the program, cultural exchange, makes people feel good, too. But if you care about immigration and cultural exchange, use all your energy to support refugees or protest that we’ve put kids in cages on the border. If you are worried about child care, advocate for universal pre-K. But a program designed to skirt labor rights and anti-trafficking regulations in order to import cheap and vulnerable domestic workers does not address those problems.
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