PROVINCETOWN — Frank Vasello, owner of the sandwich shop Relish in the West End, heard on Friday, April 12 from a Bulgarian student who worked for him last summer that the student’s J-1 visa application had been placed “on hold” by the U.S. embassy in Bulgaria.
The embassy had sent the student an email with instructions to find a different employer, “preferably in a city other than Provincetown.”
Over the course of that day, Vasello heard from other business owners in town that some of their J-1 student employees had received the same message.
The Independent obtained copies of three emails sent at different times on April 12, all from the same email address at the Non-Immigrant Visa Unit of the U.S. embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria. They had identical wording, and all suggested that the recipient should find summer employment outside Provincetown.
The emails have not been explained to business owners, town officials, or Cape Cod’s legislators.
Provincetown Town Manager Alex Morse said he was “deeply concerned” about the emails and had contacted the office of U.S. Rep. Bill Keating.
Lauren Amendolara McDermott, deputy chief of staff for Keating, said the congressman had “immediately requested a briefing from the State Dept.” upon learning about the emails on Monday, April 15.
“Congressman Keating is demanding those answers as soon as possible,” McDermott said.
Essential Workers
The J-1 visa program includes several cultural exchange programs administered by the U.S. State Dept. The “Summer Work Travel” program is the best-known on Cape Cod, as it allows international college students to live and work in the U.S. in the summer, which coincides with the region’s enormous need for seasonal workers.
In 2019, before the Covid pandemic disrupted international travel for two years, there were about 700 J-1 employees working in the four Outer Cape towns; about 500 of them were in Provincetown.
About 5,000 students — 5 percent of the entire Summer Work Travel cohort — worked on the Cape that year, according to Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce CEO Paul Niedzwiecki.
The program was slow to recover after the pandemic — partly due to slowdowns inside U.S. embassies, the Independent has reported — but there were 351 J-1 students working in Provincetown last summer. Many of them work four seasons in a row for the same employer, serving ice cream, working retail counters, or busing tables at restaurants — and paying for college with their earnings.
Vasello said that three of the six Bulgarian students he was sponsoring at Relish this summer have been told by the State Dept. to find a job elsewhere, and he is worried about what the other three might soon hear.
The Independent found five other businesses whose student employees were also told to look outside Provincetown, for a total of more than a dozen students in limbo. Those businesses include Tin Pan Alley, Terraza, Helltown Kitchen, and Grab N’ Go, all four of whose student employees are on hold.
But other business owners reported that their student workers were approved without incident. Mike Riley of Provincetown Bike Rentals said that all four of his J-1 students, none of whom is from Bulgaria, have their visas in hand. So do four Bulgarian employees of Strangers & Saints, said owner Steven Latasa-Nicks.
Tin Pan Alley owner Paul Melanson said that two of his students from Bulgaria have had their visas approved, while a third student received the email directive to look elsewhere.
A spokesperson for the State Dept. responded to detailed questions from the Independent with an overview of Summer Work Travel program requirements and a list of reasons why a visa application may be denied. None of the information was specific to Provincetown’s case. The State Dept. did not respond to follow-up questions.
The Independent reached an employee at the U.S. embassy in Bulgaria who said that the embassy cannot discuss students’ cases with a third party. The embassy did not respond to a follow-up message.
What’s Going On?
“It’s very confusing as to who is getting through and who might not be getting through,” Vasello said.
The State Dept. is definitely aware that many J-1 students drove pedicabs last summer — a longstanding practice here. Many town officials and business owners said last year they had not realized that such work was illegal under J-1 program rules.
Antoni Slavimirov, owner of AIM Travel, a Bulgarian agency that helps broker J-1 job assignments, said he thought the current emails were fallout from the events of last summer, when five J-1 students were sent home for visa violations after the State Dept. discovered they were working as pedicab drivers. Slavimirov guessed that the U.S. embassy is “trying to prevent this from happening again by asking some of the kids to choose different locations than Provincetown.”
Provincetown Licensing Agent Linda Fiorella told the Independent last fall that 34 of Provincetown’s 55 licensed drivers that summer had held J-1 visas — and that the licensing agents before her had also not known that was not allowed.
Tin Pan Alley employee Ilvi Shetev said last summer that someone from his American sponsor agency had questioned him and his employers as to whether he really worked his assigned shifts, since he had a pedicab license — but that he was not sent home once the sponsor agency was certain he had continued to work at Tin Pan Alley.
Vasello said that two State Dept. officials visited Relish last summer to ask him questions about pedicabs.
“They seemed primarily concerned that agencies were placing kids in jobs they were not going to actually go to and were going to drive pedicabs instead,” Vasello said.
Every Summer Work Travel visa must go through one of 37 American “sponsor organizations.”
Representatives from two of them said they did not know why Provincetown would be on hold.
“We don’t have visibility into why an application would be put on hold or rejected,” said Greenheart Exchange’s vice president of marketing, Marcelle Benedicta. “If there is a trend we are noticing, we will look into it, but that is yet to be seen.”
“I have never heard of an embassy doing anything like this, saying that you can’t go to a certain town — and certainly not in an email,” said Intrax World Travel’s Northeast regional account manager, Janice Fox. She thought the email was so unusual that it could be a scam.
“Some of my students who are on hold haven’t even been here before,” said Vasello. “It sounds like they are casting a very wide net.”
“Our season is starting in four weeks,” said William Garcia, owner of the restaurants Terraza and Helltown Kitchen. “We can’t go forward and try to find other people until we know what is happening with our employees.”
