How Summer Adventures Become Diplomacy.

• Author: Mccarry, Michael
• Position: Essay

As autumn arrives in the Northern Hemisphere, one of the U.S. State Department's least heralded but most effective exchange programs has wrapped up another successful summer.

Roughly 100,000 international students, participants in the Summer Work Travel (SWT) program, have returned home to resume their studies after a summer-long cross-cultural adventure in the United States.

SWT permits international students to work in the U.S. during their university summer breaks, allowing them to earn money to cover their program, travel, and living costs. The students boost the American economy by providing needed seasonal staffing in resort areas, and in turn, get a first-hand experience of the United States. The program receives no funding from the U.S. government.

Many of these students are visiting the U.S. for the first time. Without SWT, most of these future leaders from around the world would never visit the U.S., given the high cost of American education or even a tourist visit. Summer Work Travel is the State Department's largest exchange program, and the only one specifically designed for undergraduates.

Origins and Intent

The U.S. Information Agency (USIA) began administering the Summer Work Travel program in 1965, under its Fulbright-Hays Act authority to foster mutual understanding through a varied menu of exchanges. Following a critical 1990 General Accounting Office (GAO) report, which argued that the Exchange Visitor (J-1) visa was being misused for programs with a work component, former Senator William Fulbright clarified the legislative intent in a 1991 letter to Senator Claiborne Pell, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Fulbright wrote, "... the Fulbright-Hays legislation was intended to cover a broad spectrum of educational and cultural activities. The Summer Work Travel program is an excellent example of the activities authorized by the 'other educational activities' provision... of the Act."

Fulbright continued: "Surely USIA must recognize that work can indeed be an important and educational cross cultural experience. Indeed it may be more influential in forming attitudes and impressions of American life than a purely academic experience."

Participation Trends

Historically, participation in the program has roughly tracked global headlines. In its early years, the program remained relatively small, populated by Western European students seeking a summer adventure in the U.S. But when new democracies emerged in Central Europe after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, participation from that region grew rapidly. By the early 2000's, Poland became the leading sending country in world, annually topping 20,000 participants.

The U.S. embassy in Warsaw commented at length on this phenomenon in a 2003 cable:

"Particularly in the context of scarce resources [for funded exchanges], the Exchange...