Every summer here in NJ I see signs all around the state, hand written signs, proclaiming a desperate need to house exchange students from Spain. They even update the signs, counting down how many are still left that need a home, or how many days are left. Is there really some organization promising to bring these kids over here without having a place for them, year after year?
Not a solid answer to your question, but I wonder if they get folks to offer boarding space before they solidify on the number of positions they have open. So if they can afford to bring over 200 students, and only get 100 homes offered, they only accept 100 students.
I mean, they could just rent out a dormitory to house all 200 students, but then you lose out on the immersion aspect by having all the Spanish students surround themselves with other Spanish students vs American families.
Yeah, it just seems weird that this happens every year. And they seem so desperate in their language; the signs get to the point where they’re saying things like “still need to house 5 students before they arrive on Tuesday”, which seems a bit hard to swallow.
I wonder if it has something to do with temporary work visas (H-2B?). Many companies hire foreign workers for seasonal work. Trump’s Florida hotels were in the news a while back about their use of foreign workers. The workers are often poor and they are coming over here for basically minimum-wage jobs. Obviously, they don’t have a ton of money to pay for housing after paying for a plane ticket and working menial jobs.
If that’s the case and you’re seeing these signs, I’m guessing it’s an agency who recruits the workers and then finds housing for them. The bad agencies basically work them as slaves and houses them in a crappy rooms stacked with beds. An agency which actually tries to find them local housing doesn’t sound so bad.
Why not call the number and get some details. Ask how old the “student” will be and what they will be doing while they are here. Will they be going to school or working? Google the number and see what you come up with. You might find info on the agency and what it does
We just hosted a Spanish exchange student- sent her home today after 9 months of high school, in fact.
The organization we did it through also caught us at the last minute. We were lined up and confirmed just days before she left Spain (but she did know she was coming to us before she left, and believe that she had no assurance that she could come prior to a home being lined up).
Apparently, they always seem to have more applicants than homes and are scrambling at the last minute to find more homes (but not advertising with street signs AFAIK). They apparently occasionally bring a kid over into temporary situations (sort of like fostering) in hopes of finding a long term solution. I’m guessing that they may rely on people who agree to temporary housing to occasionally agree to commit to longer term, rather than return the kid.
This organization does have kids from all over, not just Spain. They do seem quite professional (despite the bit about scrambling for housing). They check out the host home prior. There were regular follow-ups with us and with the exchange student (initially in person, and then through Skype), conducted separately, to ensure safety and satisfaction for both us and the student. They have tons of rules for student conduct. There was at least one case of a student with conduct issues, who had to be returned after trials with several families.
At any rate, I’m not surprised that they are perpetually scrambling for homes. I do find the “hand-written signs” thing dodgy. I’m guessing that there is money to be made arranging exchanges, causing some corner-cutting and potentially sketchy arrangements.
Beach hotels on the east coast are in the summer are heavily staffed by foreign workers on J-1 cultural exchangevisas. Traditionally it’s been primarily young people from Ireland and eastern Europe, but maybe there are more Spanish kids participating nowadays. Summer housing for these workers is typically haphazard and crowded.
How did they find you to be the host? For high school students, I would think they’d find a family with a child going to the same school.
My wife set it up, so I’m not sure. She had been thinking of hosting for a while. I think she may have seen something in the paper. Or word of mouth.
We do have a high school student, but it was not set up through her school. Actually, the exchange student was going to a charter school, and my wife liked dealing with them so much better than the school we were in by district, so she switched my daughter to THAT school when she found that they had an opening.
My aunt and uncle have hosted a few Israeli students, and they were scrutinized by the organization, even though they were registered foster parents. However, it may have been partly because they wanted to know about my aunt and uncle’s level of observance, so they could match them with a student from a similar background. But they did things like run their credit when they were taking one student long-term. The shorter term students, not so much, but someone from the agency arranging it did come by.
What with the hand-written signs and the summer season, I’ll bet that this is the answer re: the OP.
I spent two months in Canada as an exchange student in 1989 along with 60 other Belgians. We first stayed in Toronto all together for 3 days to get used to our new surroundings then were dispatched to our respective families all over Ontario for the rest of the exchange.
When the stay ended we all got back together in Toronto to get the plane to Belgium and of course, started sharing our expriences. Almost all of them were extremely positive but there was this one guy whose family decided after a couple weeks that they were not interested in the program anymore and asked for another family to take him. So, another family accepted tentatively but couldn’t manage it either so he was sent to a third family with whom he got to stay until the end of the exchange. His time with the last family was great but the start of his stay was miserable.
It could be a similar situation.
I have a friend who, along with her husband and wife (this is not a typo) have hosted a number of exchange students in recent years. They haven’t done it in the past couple of years because they have had some serious health problems, but she was unable to have children and this has really helped her deal with it. They have hosted young women (they requested girls - don’t recall why) from several countries (Hungary, Thailand, Kazakhstan, and a couple other equally divergent nations) and had good experiences with all except the last one, who was caught it a big-time lie about some of her whereabouts and was assigned to another foster family at their request, and I heard later that she was sent home early.
My friend and her husband are pagan, and their wife is Christian, and they have always been very respectful of their students’ religious beliefs and accommodated them as best they could. They have had a few times when the circle met skyclad (i.e. naked) and they didn’t feel comfortable having the students there, and the feeling was mutual.
Well, we’ve hosted students in the summers for up to 3 weeks and they definitely have the kids lined up before the housing (one year, we wound up taking 3 because they were having trouble finding homes).
And we’ve gone an organization REALLY pushing us to host someone this coming school year. We’re interested, but have decided not to because that’s a HUGE commitment in time / energy.
Would I even consider hosting as a result of a sign I saw? No way - especially a handwritten sign. Too risky for a lot of reasons.
With the first summer program, it was word of mouth (sent out by a Boy Scout troop leader.
With the second summer program, and the school-year-long program, it was an organization that had gotten our name when we looked in on them at a “gap year fair” (not sure why they were there as they don’t do gap year programs, but whatever).
We have also hosted college-age students for a couple of months, but that’s a personal connection: we have a friend who’s an instructor at a CEGEP in Quebec and she’s placed her students for 2-month stints at several homes of her online friends around the English-speaking world.
I can only speak to the local signs posted in my area.
They come from a volunteer of an organization called Global Friendships. During the school year she is teacher at an elementary school. In the summer, she coordinates 2 different groups of teenaged Spaniards that signed up for a “live-in-the-US-for-4-weeks” program. (Global Friendships has a different name in Spain). My wife and i were part of the hosting program for the past 3 years, loved it! Can’t do it this year because our first baby will be born in just a matter of days.
Hosting is a little bit of a commitment, but really not that big of a deal. The kids are in, what i called, America Class. 4 days a week they go to either the local library or church and listen to american songs with a sheet of lyrics and they have to fill in the blank lyrics as they listen to the song, they have to draw and explain in English their favorite American super hero, learn basics about US government outside of just the President whom they always know, stuff like that, ya know, America class.
Fridays they have off and will either spend time with the host family or go out with another host family that has a trip planned outside of the program. Another family might take them to the beach for the weekend, or shopping, the movies, anything. The program does have certain days where the kids will be out all day long such as going to Baltimore for sight-seeing and then an evening Orioles baseball game. Other days will be spent in Washington, D.C. or going to Hershey Park (in Pennsylvania).
The coordinator here does have to meet with any hosting family to make sure that the kids will have a bedroom with a door (boys can shared bedrooms with boys, girls with girls). The house has to be maintained, no mildew, no leaky roof, working facilities, etc - pretty basic inspection just to make sure the kids are safe. The kids come insured by the program and their parents. Once assigned to a host family, the coordinator would encourage us to reach out their student and his/her parents - it can be intimidating for the younger kids as young as 13 years.
On days when you have to work long, the coordinator or another host family is always available to pick up your student and host them until you are done your day, which makes the program convenient and less disruptive. Many of the host families in the area have parents that are home during summer and off work. I know 2 people who take off work during one of the 4 week periods to watch the student and her kids.
It’s a great experience. My wife and i had only ever hosted the group chaperone, (typically an adult around our age–late 20s early 30s) but we had insight on the entire process and everything that would go on during their stay. If it weren’t for our firstborn arriving soon we would definitely be hosting one of the sessions this year.