Ugne Duncyte felt coming to the United States on a cultural exchange program would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
And some of it was exactly that.
The 27-year-old social work student from Lithuania came to work in Estes Park for two summers on a , a U.S. Department of State program designed to facilitate the exchange of scientific and cultural knowledge between the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Duncyte relished the chance to learn about American culture, attending rodeos and Fourth of July festivities. She road-tripped to Mexico, hiked in national parks throughout the West and saw the sights in New York and Los Angeles. During one summer, she met the love of her life while trekking through Rocky Mountain National Park.
“These experiences changed my life,” Duncyte said.
And yet the program had its downsides, she said. Her boss at the local diner constantly talked behind her back. She was almost fired for reasons she couldn’t understand. Turns out, that manager was a convicted sex offender who preyed on the young foreigners, she said.
“I was crying a lot back then,” Duncyte said.
Her experience represents the dichotomy of the J-1 visa, at times an indelible, life-altering opportunity to travel to a new country, meet people from all over the world and earn a little money along the way. At other times, the program makes participants feel like exploitable low-wage workers with few protections, according to interviews with more than a dozen visa-holders who worked in Colorado.
One J-1 student from Turkey said management would yell and humiliate him for every mistake and sexually harass his female colleagues. Visitors say they lived with as many as 14 other people, with four crammed into each room. Other participants in Colorado have filed lawsuits against their employers, accusing them of taking advantage of the J-1s without providing any of the cultural opportunities promised in the visa.
More than 9,000 people came to Colorado last year on the J-1 visa, working as physicians, professors, researchers, ski workers, restaurant servers and au pairs, among myriad opportunities. They worked in ritzy Colorado mountain towns and with families in suburban Denver. Many of the visitors interviewed by The Denver Post lived near ski resorts and national parks due to seasonal influxes in tourists and labor needs.
In August, the Trump administration published a that would establish a four-year limit on student J-1 visa holders. The rule has not yet been finalized.
Nearly all of the young people interviewed for this story said they would recommend the program to their friends. But they wanted people to understand all that comes with the experience.
“Agencies paint you this pretty picture: It will be easy and you’ll travel every weekend,” said Karla Rodriguez, who came to Colorado from Mexico to work as an au pair. “In reality, it’s a job. You have to be conscious that you’ll spend most of your time working.”
Birth of the J-1 visa program
The J-1 visa program was born out of the of 1961 “to promote foreign policy objectives of mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through educational and cultural activities.”
The law came amid a wave of Cold War-era soft-power initiatives — such as the — promoted by President John F. Kennedy as the U.S. sought to .
More than 300,000 foreigners come to the U.S. on J-1 visas every year, with the serving as the most popular option. Colorado boasts the fifth-highest number of these visa-holders in the country, according to U.S. government data.
The program has long been plagued by accusations that it’s not being used as the law intended.
The , a congressional watchdog, in 1990 found certain portions of the program — including the summer work exchange and the camp counselor and au pair programs — are “inconsistent with legislative intent.”
“Authorizing J visas for the participants and activities that are not clearly for educational and cultural purposes as specified in the act dilutes the integrity of the J visa and obscures the distinction between the J visa and other visas granted for work purposes,” the watchdog wrote in its .
The government’s oversight of the program, the agency found, does not ensure that participant activities conform to the intent of the law.
Yet the J-1 visa has continued to expand in popularity, with the problematic jobs identified in the report becoming an ingrained segment of the program.
Participants told The Post that they have worked for fast food chains like Subway and at large grocery stores such as Safeway. Others toiled in restaurants and cleaned hotel rooms.
Many of them enjoyed the jobs and knew what they were signing up for when they left their home countries.
“It was busy all the time,” said Ognen Mladenovski, a J-1 visa holder from North Macedonia, who worked for Subway in Estes Park. “No slow hours, no breaks. I had a lot of work that needed to be done and done fast.”
Nikolay Paraskevov, a J-1 student from Bulgaria, said his job at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park allowed him to connect with lots of tourists who came to visit the national park.
‘How will I survive?’
But some J-1 students said their jobs did not conform to expectations.
Duncyte spent a summer at the You Need Pie Diner in Estes Park.
Her manager, David Morales, seemed nice at the start. But Duncyte noticed the man, who was in his 40s, spent a lot of time partying with the young J-1 students.
Morales had previously served years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree assault and attempted sexual assault, court records show.
In August, Estes Park police Morales on suspicion of providing alcohol to minors at a closed restaurant, as well as failing to register as a sex offender. His criminal cases remain ongoing. Morales could not be reached for comment.
“I felt so disappointed,” Duncyte said about her experience at the diner. “I never had a similar situation in my life. I’m just a girl from Lithuania. Nobody can protect me, nobody can explain what’s happening. I was very lost.”
Another J-1 worker, an au pair in Aspen, said her host father was clearly interested in her romantically and made her uncomfortable. When she rebuffed his advances, she said he became cold and hostile. The woman spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity because she still hopes to return to the U.S. on another visa.
In 2023, Daniel Esteban Camas Lopez, a culinary arts student from Mexico, the upscale , alleging he and other J-1 students were sold a “false promise of an internship” when, in fact, management “exploited plaintiff and the class for low-wage, menial work in direct violation of state and federal law.”
Lopez claimed he was mandated to work 48-hour weeks when the internship promised a maximum of 40 hours. He said he worked mainly at the sauté station, preparing, cooking and plating the food and then passing it on to servers.
When he asked the executive chef to train him on restaurant operations, as promised in the program, Lopez said he was ignored. And despite the J-1 visa’s intended emphasis on cultural experiences, Lopez said there was no time for him to engage in out-of-work activities.
“Throughout plaintiff’s time at St. Regis, he felt that any American worker could fill his role,” the lawsuit states. “He noticed that he was simply providing cheap labor for the severely understaffed kitchen.”
The lawsuit, which was filed in district court and later transferred to federal court, remains ongoing.
Marriott International, which operates St. Regis, said in court filings that Lopez freely entered into the J-1 program, was paid regular and overtime wages, and voluntarily chose to quit.
Other J-1 students in Aspen reported similar dissatisfaction with their American experience.
A group of 30 visa-holders, in an August 2024 to management at the , said managers provided housing 45 minutes away in Glenwood Springs. The motel where they lived featured tiny, moldy rooms with broken air conditioning, the workers wrote in the letter, first reported by . Workers saw rats, snakes and general neglect, “creating a highly unpleasant living environment,” they wrote.
“Many J-1 employees have found this summer to be a miserable experience, feeling reduced to mere laborers rather than valued contributors,” the group said.
Even students who loved their J-1 experiences told The Post the living conditions were often dicey. Many said they lived four people to a room and shared a bathroom with 10 others. One Estes Park worker said their kitchen just had a microwave, no oven.
Paraskevov, the J-1 student from Bulgaria, said his first reaction to his Estes Park housing was, “How will I survive?”
“It was miserable,” he said.
These complaints mirror accusations levied against J-1 employers across the country.
An in 2010 found that some students were being forced to dance at strip clubs, while others were being paid less than $1 an hour after labor brokers deducted fees. A Hershey Company packing plant was caught putting visa holders on grueling overnight shifts.
A in September found many J-1 workers suffered abuse and mistreatment by American businesses in a poorly regulated program ripe for exploitation. Companies made students wash blood and feces from pig pens and ordered them to pressure renters into signing leases in run-down apartment buildings, all under the guise of cultural exchange.
The au pair program, meanwhile, is “strategically used to sustain — and disguise — a government-created domestic worker program to provide flexible, in-home childcare for upper-middle-class families at below-market prices,” according to a in the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender.
“The discourse and structure of this government-sponsored ‘cultural exchange’ program render au pairs a worker population hidden from formal labor scrutiny,” the report’s author noted.
A life-changing experience
Despite the challenges, J-1 students interviewed by The Post overwhelmingly said they would do it all over again.
The visa program represents a big step, they said — a step out of their comfort zone, away from their family and friends. But it also represents an opportunity to see the world, meet new people and make new memories.
“It taught me how to cooperate with other people, how to live with other people,” said Mladenovski, the J-1 student from North Macedonia. “How to buy things meant for everybody, how to share responsibilities and chores.”
The program gives these visitors a built-in friend group with which to travel the country. And J-1s said they took advantage: sightseeing in New York City, road-tripping to national parks across the west, and hitting the beach in Florida and California.
Duncyte, the master’s student from Lithuania, said she was immediately overwhelmed by Colorado’s beauty and wildlife.
“All summer, I was walking around with my eyes wide open,” she said. “I was like in some kind of heaven. It was like in the movies.”
Her English, she said, wasn’t great at first. But she didn’t have any other option “but to be brave and try and improve as much as possible.”
In her free time, she hiked in Rocky Mountain National Park. One day, while trekking alone, she met a man from Mexico on the trail. They instantly connected. He came to Lithuania. She went to Mexico. Now they’re in Canada, traveling together.
They plan eventually to go back to Lithuania, get married and settle down.
“It was absolutely life-changing,” she said.
