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Summer Work/Travel
Regulations pertaining specifically to the Summer Work/Travel category are found at [22 CFR 62.32].
Through this category foreign post-secondary students may enter the United States to work and travel for a maximum of four months during their summer vacations. While most participants enter the United States with prearranged employment, sponsors are required to place only 50 percent of their participants each year. Sponsors must ensure that participants entering the United States without prearranged employment have sufficient financial resources to support themselves during their search for employment. In addition, sponsors must provide such participants with information on how to seek employment and secure lodging in the United States before they depart their home countries, and with a job directory that includes at least as many job listings as the number of participants in their program who are entering the United States without prearranged employment. Finally, sponsors must undertake reasonable efforts to secure suitable employment for participants unable to find jobs on their own after one week.
Sponsors are to advise program participants about Federal Minimum Wage requirements, and are to ensure that participants receive the same pay and benefits as received by their American counterparts in the same or similar positions.
Program regulations permit participants to repeat the program more than once. However, sponsors are required to limit the number of repeating participants to no more than 10 percent of the number of their previous year's participants.
Department regulations prohibit the placement of program participants as domestic help in U.S. households or in positions requiring them to invest their own money for inventory, such as door-to-door sales. Most participants typically work in non-skilled service positions at resorts, hotels, restaurants, and amusement parks. Summer internships in US businesses and other organizations (i.e., architecture, science research, graphic art/publishing and other media communication, advertising, computer software and electronics, and legal offices, etc.) are allowed. However, the term of the internship may not exceed the four-month program duration, and must be completed during the student's summer vacation.
Introduction. These regulations govern program participation in summer work travel programs conducted by Department of State-designated sponsors pursuant to the authority granted the Department of State by Public Law 105–277. These programs provide foreign post-secondary students the opportunity to work and travel in the United States for a four month period during their summer vacations. Extensions of program participation are not permitted.
Participant selection and screening. In addition to satisfying the requirements set forth at §62.10(a), sponsors shall adequately screen all program participants and at a minimum shall:
(1) Conduct an in-person interview;
(2) Ensure that the participant is a bona fide post-secondary school student in his or her home country; and
(3) Ensure that not more than ten percent of selected program participants have previously participated in a summer work travel program.
Participant orientation. Sponsors shall provide program participants, prior to their departure from the home country, information regarding:
(1) The name and location of their employer, if prior employment has been arranged; and
(2) Any contractual obligations related to their acceptance of paid employment in the United States, if prior employment has been arranged.
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