A multitude of abuse stories flood the media everyday, outraging the public. The problem is that we tend to focus strictly on the American cases.
As Americans, we should certainly consider protection within our country a top priority, especially when we hear about cases such as Danielle “Dani” Lierow who spent the first seven years of life in a dark room filled with her own soiled diapers and lacking the ability to speak.
Although physical and emotional abuse of American children is serious, we should not prioritize them over issues equally as serious concerning non-American children. We should not put America, a nation of immigrants, above humanity.
There are efforts underway by groups like the Committee for Safety of Foreign Exchange Students to actively raise awareness of foreign exchange students being taken advantage of by American host families. Their mission statement is to fight for them and to prevent future victims.
A new Arkansas bill recently passed — The Arkansas Foreign Exchange Program Act — focuses on better protecting our country’s visitors through requirements such as having “a criminal background check performed” on “all members of a host family sixteen years of age or older.” The law includes having a “statewide central registry check for cases involving allegations of child maltreatment.”
Students themselves are speaking out about experiences with abuse and neglect, such as a young Australian girl who “was delivered’ to a man living in Oregon, who endeavored to live out his sexual fantasy by attempting to make her into his private sex slave. “He was never convicted of a crime.”
There are other active investigations of host parents, area supervisors and sponsors being conducted over allegations of sexual abuse.
While all of these factors are major steps toward creating a safer environment for children and teens that we bring inside our borders, they are not enough to effect drastic change in our nation.
Huge flaws still exist within the exchange student business. The Council for Standards on International Educational Travel, which certifies the commerce, is currently exerting its power to try and remove criminal background checks in Oregon. I can assume the organization is not fighting to prevent checks in other states because they are already non-obligatory. Even when agencies do Internet background checks they tend to be deeply flawed, officials indicate.
Even when students speak out, these programs more often than not deal with the problem by either relocating them or calling them “troublemakers,” sending them back to their own countries, while the hosts escape unscathed.
The reason that CSFES and like-minded groups promote education about potential abuse is to seek volunteers and to reach concerned citizens. Unfortunately, the average American tends to sit back expecting our government to do something, or straight up not giving a damn simply because foreign students are foreign students.
As long as there are people getting away with injustice, and as long as even one foreign exhange student is abused, we are failing as Americans and more importantly as humans.
Jean Kim is an English major and a contributing writer for the Daily Forty-Niner.