Hilton Head international worker: ‘This is not the America I was promised’

Regine Marie Langrio parks her bicycle and opens the door to her 2-bedroom apartment — the one she shares with seven roommates.

Her forehead glistens with sweat. A 7-mile bike ride home in the 93-degree heat is to blame. She mops her forehead, but the exhaustion Regine feels after a long day of cleaning floors, washing dishes and frying chicken will not be erased so easily.

The 20-year-old Filipino student doesn’t even bother to take off her grease-stained polo shirt from the Bi-Lo grocery store on Hilton Head Island before she plops on an air mattress in her tiny, 10-by-10 foot bedroom, surrounded by boxes of ramen noodles and Nike shoes she bought as gifts for family back home.

She pays no mind to the other air mattress and cushions that serve as her roommates’ makeshift beds crammed beside her own.

Here, spread out on the $15 mattress she bought at Walmart, 8,900 miles from home, Regine can think. And one thought, playing on an endless loop, dances in her head.

This is not the America I was promised.

“All my coworkers see me as a positive girl — even though on the inside I’m broken,” said Regine, who is finishing a bachelor’s degree in customs administration back home. “I’m just so tired. It’s like: Why did I come all this way just for this?”

The U.S. government and Bi-Lo representatives say workers such as Regine are in the United States primarily for cultural exchange.

But on this day in June, her life in America feels more like being used as cheap labor.

Regine is one of the about 130,000 young foreign workers — mostly college students — who come to the U.S. on the J-1 Visa Exchange Visitor Program every year. The visas allow students to take jobs and work in the country for up to 18 months. Hilton Head relies on about 350 such workers each year to fill tourism jobs, particularly in the summer.

They come from dozens of countries — places such as Thailand, Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom — to staff some of the island’s most well-known tourism properties, including the Salty Dog Cafe, Sea Pines and the Sonesta, Marriott and Disney resorts.

Many of the students, who view the program as an opportunity to see America, enjoy their time on Hilton Head and return year after year.

But others, including Regine, pay thousands in fees to do menial work with little exposure to American culture — and leave with the sting of empty promises.

Regine says two companies, a Filipino recruiter, First Place Inc., and an American sponsor, CSB International, misled her about what her time in America would be like.

“They lied. Everything is a lie,” Regine said.

First Place Inc. denies her claims, while the CSB International did not return multiple calls from The Island Packet.

Live the Dream

Layers of people stood to profit from the 8,900-mile trip that landed Regine in a grocery store deli on Pope Avenue.

She meets the first on a warm day in the Philippines last December.

On her way to a college business class, she spots a tent set up on campus with an American woman standing in front, talking to students — an oddity in her provincial town an hour outside of Manila. Nearby stands a poster of U.S. landmarks — the Statue of Liberty, the White House, the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Live the Dream,” it proclaims.

She is handed a flyer with even more promises: “An Adventure of a Lifetime, ” it read. “Enhance your English as well as your personality.” “We don’t just build careers, we develop character.”

The flyer promises the company, First Place Inc., has more than 4,000 job placements for Filipino students in America.

The pitch appeals to Regine, who longs to see Hollywood, New York and the American spots she’s seen on the movie screen. And an American job on her resume? Yes, that would impress would-be employers when she came home, she thinks.

Too, a trip like this might bring some independence into her sheltered life.

Like most unmarried Filipino young adults, Regine still lives with her parents. Her three siblings tease her for being babied. At the carnival owned by her mom and dad, she is no longer allowed to even run the popcorn stand. Boys had started to notice her, to flirt with her.

Now, standing in this spot full of promise, she hands the recruiter from First Place her phone number.

Soon, the texts start rolling in from the company:

Hello dear, how are you?

What’s your plan?

Are you going to U.S. or what?

Dear, fill out the application now. It will be easy. I will help you with all the plans.

Don’t you want to visit New York, L.A., Las Vegas?

Each text comes with pressure not to miss the opportunity. So Regine pays the $150 application fee for the program and submits her parent’s bank statements, business permits for the carnival and the income tax returns the company requests to verify she can afford the trip.

What she doesn’t know is that recruiting companies like First Place Inc. charge hundreds in fees, even though workers can enroll in the J-1 program without the help of an intermediary in their home country.

All Regine knows is that she is going to work in America to live the dream.

But this dream is expensive. The company requires Regine to buy her flights to the U.S. through its partner travel agency for $2,300 — $1,000 more than the most affordable flights available from other carriers on her travel dates. She also pays $1,450 in program fees, $500 of which goes to First Place and about $950 that goes to CSB International, a sponsor company out of Babylon, N.Y. All J-1 workers are required to have a sponsor company to oversee their time in the country.

CSB’s website says it is “devoted to help start and unfold an American summer adventure: one dream at the time.”

The sponsor company connects Regine with a hiring manager at Southeastern Grocers, the parent company of Bi-Lo, which agrees to hire the eager visa applicant.

Regine also pays $160 to apply for a visa and fees for housing, transportation and expenses upon arrival.

All told, she borrows about $5,000 to work in the grocery store deli.

Worries before the trip

Regine’s father worries.

“If anything goes wrong, call us and we will fly you home the next day,” her dad says.

The two of them, along with Regine’s older sister, are sitting in a five-star hotel conference room in Manila. They and hundreds of other students and parents are there to learn more about traveling to the U.S. through the visa program.

It was a grand presentation, Regine recalls months later. A First Place employee, dressed in a suit, paraded up and down the rows of seats.

“You all are so lucky,” the man said into his microphone. “Look at your parents. They can afford to send you on this opportunity in the U.S.”

Regine’s job offer form states she will work as a “seasonal associate” at a grocery store near Miami and her lodging will be within walking distance to a library, a grocery store and the post office.

She reads that she will be an “associate” and “assist, greet and thank customers” and thinks she will have a desk job.

Her dad is already bragging to his friends that Regine — his Regine — will be the first in their immediate family to see America and, even better, she will be in Florida.

He tells her to tell him all about Disney World. He’s always wanted to go there himself.

Preparing to leave

Pictures of Taylor Swift dot the pink bedroom where Regine stays up late researching and planning for everything she will do and see in America.

A few weeks before her departure date, however, Regine walks into the kitchen with news. She’s been reassigned from a job in Miami to one in a place called Hilton Head Island.

“Where’s that? I thought you would be working in Florida?’” her father asks. “What is South Carolina?”

A pause.

“What about Disney World?”

Two days before her flight, Regine gets another curve. She is told she will not be living on Hilton Head but will commute from a town about 20 minutes away called Bluffton.

Disappointment seeps in, but she realizes she has no recourse without forfeiting the thousands she has already paid.

Regine meets up with friends to say goodbye. They are jealous, and she promises to bring them American clothes and shoes.

Her mother takes her clothes shopping and has her try on dozens of blazers, trousers and collared shirts for her new job in an American office.

The night before her flight, Regine’s parents pack her bag with essentials — and her mind with advice.

“Don’t be dumb; people might take advantage,” her father says.

“Don’t be lazy. You must work hard to impress your boss,” her mother adds.

On March 31, nearly four months after first meeting the recruiter, Regine says goodbye to her parents and cries at the airport with her boyfriend, Ralph.

She rolls a suitcase almost as tall as her 4’11” frame into the Manila airport and boards the first airplane of her life.

Welcome to Bluffton

After 23 hours of traveling and eight hours waiting at the Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport, Regine crowds into a cab with seven other Filipino students who have arrived from their own flights from around the world.

Almost all are electric with excitement, scanning the airport for every glimpse of America.

They stuff themselves and three months’ worth of luggage into the van, which winds through the rainy night to their accommodations in the Suburban Extended Stay business hotel off U.S. 278 in Bluffton.

“All I saw was trees,” she said later. “I never realized America had a province like this. All I knew was New York, Las Vegas.”

With a little time before their work officially starts, they decide to go exploring. But the hotel is on a busy road with no sidewalks.

While Regine’s job-offer form claimed her lodging would be within walking distance to a grocery store, a library and a post office, she must walk 30 minutes along busy U.S. 278 to reach the nearest grocery store and about an hour to get to the library and the post office, picking through the grass along the bustling highway.

Without any transportation, the group hangs out at McDonald’s in front of the hotel and hikes along the highway every day of their first week to the outlet mall where they buy gifts for friends back home.

They mostly talk about what work will be like, what their time in the U.S. will bring.

Regine worries she won’t live up to the expectations of an American boss in her first job.

A phone call home

Within an hour of walking into Bi-Lo on her first day, Regine realizes she will never need her suits. Her worries of being unqualified evaporate. She feels the disappointment, but tries to push it away.

Her manager teaches her to fry chicken and work the deli food line.

She learns to dip the industrial fryer and avoid the hot oil. She scoops servings of potato salad onto plates to serve the retirees and tourists that frequent the grocery near the island’s tourism hub of Coligny Plaza.

She mops the floor in her hairnet and an apron that goes down to her ankles; she stoops to wash tubs of leftover macaroni.

“What am I going to tell everybody at home?,” she thinks.

That night her parents call her over a video chat, and Regine’s heart pounds.

She can’t find the courage to meet her mother’s gaze and decides to lie, saying she has been placed in the store’s inventory department, managing shipments of food.

She fears — knows — that if her parents suspect she is washing dishes, they will insist she come home immediately.

“I love it here,” she says. “My job is easy. Americans are so nice.”

“Are you eating enough? You shouldn’t get too skinny,” her mom warns.

On the move

For the first month, a public bus picks Regine and her roommates up around 6:30 a.m. and drops them off at work about an hour later. Since their shifts typically start between 8 and 11 a.m., the students often just wait outside the store. Often, Regine walks to the nearby Holy Family Catholic Church. There, she prays for her family and for the strength to adjust to and embrace life in the U.S.

But it becomes clear the students are losing a financial battle. Worried they are nowhere near making enough money to cover their trip and some traveling they hope to do in America, Regine’s group decides to move closer to work.

Although she didn’t make it to Florida, a school friend has family in Los Angeles. There is still a chance she can get to Disney Land.

Regine and her friends move in with four other J-1 students in a two-bedroom condo at Treetops Villas on Cordillo Parkway. It’s cheaper and quicker and now they are a short bike ride from Bi-Lo.

Still, there is a tradeoff. The new accommodations are more crowded, and with no bed, Regine buys an air mattress and sandwiches it into a corner of the room she shares with three others.

Still concerned about the debt to her family, Regine takes a second job for a short time at the Which Wich sandwich shop next to Bi-Lo. She is paid $11.75 an hour at Bi-Lo and $7.25 at Which Wich.

While she works every day, she stills worries about money. She works hard though, cleaning areas of the deli without being asked. Once, her manager rewards her, telling her to go to the office to eat some chocolates for being such a good cleaner.

She glows with pride.

Family grows suspicious

At night, Regine keeps a constant video stream with her boyfriend, Ralph, that continues even while they sleep. Over what has become her regular dinner of a hot dog and rice, she shares confidences about her disappointment and worries, despite the 12-hour time difference between them.

She can’t bring herself to do the same with her parents, however. When they talk over video chat, she angles the camera so they can only see the blank white walls of her bedroom, rather than the cramped apartment.

At home, Regine’s family has multiple houses, drivers and a maid. Here, at the foot of her mattress sits an orange plastic bag, bulging with the blazers, button-down dress shirts and slacks that were carefully packed by her mother before she left the Philippines.

Two months later, the clothes sit, unworn. Tags still attached. A constant reminder of hope unfulfilled and of expectations shattered.

She doesn’t let her mom know she’s never worn the clothes. But her mother has her suspicions anyway.

One day she notices a burn on Regine’s arm from the chicken fryer and peppers her with questions.

“What is that? Oh, my God. Have you been burned?”

“It was just when I was cooking dinner,” Regine lies. “Don’t worry.”

But Regine’s mother texts all of Regine’s friends: “Check on Regine. I know she is lying to me. I think something is wrong. Tell me what she says.”

When her friends call, they laugh about mothers being mothers. But the calls still rattle Regine.

Her friends are enjoying their summers, working business internships in the Phillipines. They aren’t concerned about money. They aren’t ashamed of how much they talked up their summer plans.

And they aren’t feeling disillusioned and naive, so far from home.

I just want to go home

Four days left. Four days, and her summer work on Hilton Head will be done.

But lying on the mattress, she’s not sure she can hold out that long.

The night before, several of the roommates found money missing, and the evening was spent arguing and finger-pointing. Regine is out $55. Stressed about debt and thrown together for convenience, the theft pushes the group over the edge.

Regine sits up on her mattress. “I just want to go home. I can’t be here any more.”

That would be her last day working on Hilton Head.

She and three roommates leave for Charleston to stay with one of the student’s godmother. Bi-Lo won’t miss them, they think. They have 24 new Thai students on J-1 visas arriving in town next week to start jobs.

There is some good news. Regine makes it to Los Angeles, and even visits Disney Land. Her dad would have loved comparing all the rides to his own in the family carnival, she thinks. They could have taken their picture together in front of the iconic Sleeping Beauty castle.

Even that can’t live up to expectations, though. “It was happy, but it’s kind of sad to be in the happiest place on Earth without your family or friends,” Regine says after her trip.

Asked what she will tell her parents when she gets home, Regine says she doesn’t know. She hopes they will forgive some of the $5,000 she has borrowed.

“I can never ever, ever tell them what I really did here,” she says.

Still, Regine feels more independent. She feels older. She can never view the people who wash her dishes and clean her family’s carnival back home the same way again.

“I now know how to work. I know what hard work is really like,” she said. “I just wish I didn’t have to give so much to fly to America for that.”

This story was originally published August 8, 2016 at 9:17 AM with the headline "Hilton Head international worker: ‘This is not the America I was promised’."