Guest Workers

One of the most interesting things that we have seen on our trip has been the number of foreign (mostly former eastern block) students working in small town restaurants. Every small town that we have been in has had young people (mostly girls) working as waitresses in the restaurants. We have seen Russian, Czech, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and I am sure there are others. This is very unusual for those of us from the south as we just do not see this down there. I have spoken with some of these young women and asked them their impressions of the US. They have been very frank and the opinions have ranged from "I like it very much" to "Nothing special". This program apparently only allows them to come to very small, rural areas. The first girls we met were Russian and they were in a town of about 2000 people. This town is way up in the mountains of Idaho and while a beautiful setting, not exactly a hub of industry or activity. When we were in Wall, SD a few days ago, there were a lot of the foreign workers even some from one of the oriental countries. I just don't know which one. We have encountered these young people in Idaho, Montana and now South Dakota. In Montana, they have the workers from Eastern Europe in the summer and in winter they bring in kids from South America. I can just imagine the shock of some of the South Americans as this particular area of Montana got about 400 inches of snow last year. We have yet to find out just how this program works as to where they live, how much are they paid, etc. I did find one website that was a company who supplied these workers, but it had very general information We have very much enjoyed talking to these young people along the way and I wanted to share this experience with you.

 Comments