State Department fails to address student visa abuses

A six-month Associated Press investigation uncovered massive problems with a popular State Department program designed to foster cultural understanding. Reporters Bert Mohr, Mitch Weiss and Mike Baker found that foreign students pay recruiters thousands to help find employment, then don't get work or wind up making little or no money at menial jobs. Labor recruiters charge students exorbitant rent for packing them into filthy, sparsely furnished apartments. Other students are forced to work in strip clubs. The reporters discovered that the State Department has known about the problems for years but had done little to help. The investigation was based on dozens of interviews and thousands of pages of documents, including confidential memos of police reports sent to the State Department over the years.