Foreign workers are coming to DE
Margaret Szczepanska had spent nearly a day in the air, flying from Warsaw to Zurich, then to New York City. From there, she took a bus for the six-hour trip to Salisbury, Md., and after that, a taxi to Ocean City.
About 3 a.m. May 27, as America was sleeping off a long holiday weekend night, the Polish college student, who was in Maryland for a summer job, was stuck at Eighth Street, desperate and in need of help.
"I traveled by myself without any friends, and I was very confused and nervous," Szczepanska said.
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She called her travel program's local representative, Anne Marie Conestabile -- also the volunteer coordinator for the International Student Outreach Program -- and Conestabile picked her up and took her to her 26th Street apartment.
Despite the grueling trip, there was more work ahead for Szczepanska before she could start her job. Still, she was better off than international students in years past, who had no one to call when they arrived in town after midnight.
Conestabile recalls seeing travelers pass out from lack of food and heat exhaustion as they walked up and down Coastal Highway looking for homes and jobs. Like Szczepanska, they arrived in late May and early June on summer work visas.
This year, Conestabile and others have planned carefully for their arrival. Conestabile has worked nearly 20-hour days at times to find homes, food and jobs for the often-homeless, hungry and penniless young adults.
Regardless of what her group and Ocean City's Seasonal Worker Task Force accomplish, however, the deck often remains stacked against the foreign workers.
Students will still cram into small living quarters in violation of health and fire codes, still struggle to get medical help if they get sick, and many will go days eating almost nothing until their first paycheck.
A Delaware problem
The problems are not limited to Ocean City or Maryland. Delaware, too, draws large numbers of foreign students for summer jobs who face the same challenges when they arrive.
The state remains a favorite destination because it offers students a chance to see Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York on their days off.
Students who have worked in other parts of the country, especially the Midwest, say they have suffered the same problems but felt worse off because they were isolated from major cultural centers.
And as bad as working conditions can be in southern Delaware, Russian, Ukrainian and Romanian students said they can be far worse for those who get summer jobs at European resorts, where the pay is less and the hours are longer.
Ocean City task force chairwoman Virginia Biafore said much of the problem in her area comes from shady travel programs that issue visas then disappear, even though they are supposed to be significantly responsible for the visa holders.
Ineligible foreign workers
In November, the task force will meet with the Ocean City Town Council and the Homeland Security and State departments to discuss ways to better hold visa sponsors accountable.
Some problems, though, are local in origin. Biafore said last week she had discovered that employers were hiring ineligible foreign workers, either by accident or with disregard to rules, effectively costing legitimate summer visa workers their jobs.
"I've heard it's possible as many as 2,000 have been hired that aren't eligible," Biafore said. Many of those jobs had been promised to summer work visa holders, she said, but "employers get anxious because they need somebody."
Confronting the problem
The task force fights such problems with education. The town paid to send hundreds of pamphlets to employers explaining the rules for hiring legitimate visa holders. The town also has paid for thousands of pamphlets written in English, Polish and Russian that are available as new arrivals exit at the Third Street bus station.
The literature explains what registration forms international students must complete and lists dozens of phone numbers to help them throughout the summer.
Settling in
"There were many paperworks," Szczepanska said. After completing them, she joined a group starting bank accounts to protect against the chronic thefts among foreign workers seen in the past. By her third day, Szczepanska was working at Castle in the Sand.
It's a wild 72 hours, particularly for people in a foreign country trying to speak their second -- or third or fourth -- language.
"The first time I called home it was terrible. I was crying," Szczepanska said.
But on her fourth day, Szczepanska said, she was beginning to feel better.
"Yesterday I called my mother and boyfriend, and I was calm," she said. "I started feeling OK because I've met people that can help me."
