Au Pair questions

soups05

Hi all, not a part of boards I usually frequent so be gentle. I have a situation which I am hoping you can help out with.

For the last couple of years my daughter has been travelling to America to visit a friend of hers, at first for a couple of weeks, last year for 2 months. She gets on really well with the entire family including the two children 6 and 8.

Dean works for a living but is divorced and the kids live with him and his grandparents in one big house. Dean has been given notice that he has to move to shift work in august as part of company expansion, this is expected to last at least 12 months.

He and my daughter want her to be an au pair, where she would live in the house and help the grandparents look after the children while Dean is at work. In order to do this she applied for a B2 visa to allow her to go there, but this was refused as she has no ties to Ireland.

She pointed out the fact that she is going back to college for 4th year, although she intends to defer this until 2017 if she can go to the US.

From reading about visas etc the last few days it appears she applied for a travel visa rather than a work visa, so my questions are as follows

1 would the visa refusal affect her ability to get an au pair visa, i think this is an iwt j1 but correct me if am wrong

2 she is happy to mind the kids as a form of extended holiday and does not really want to be paid, this is despite the fact that Dean wants to pay her, so she refuses to discuss money with him. I told her she would need to have some form of payment even if it is just a modest amount despite the fact that she will be living in their house/eating their food etc.

3 From the info I can gather she needs a driving licence but she does not have one, both the grandparents drive as does Dean, so she would never actually have to drive, will they accept this?

4 what kind of cost/timeframe is she looking at for this as she needs to know whether to defer college and how much she needs for fees etc. If this process were to take till dec/jan then Dean needs to make other arrangements.

5 any general advice on what may crop up?

Sorry for the long list, this was dropped on me the other day when the visa was refused and I have never had to deal with anything like this before. In my innocence I believed having her family here, parents,siblings etc was enough proof she intended to return so I was surprised when she was turned down. now that I have looked into it its a relief cos it was the wrong visa anyway.

silja

1. Yes au pairs are J1s, but you need to go via an organisation and usually cannot be placed with friends or family. The previous tourism visa denial may impact the J1, it depends what exactly she said (ie whether they deemed her to be lying- you are absolutely NOT allowed to work on a B2, even unpaid, as you are taking work away from a US citizen or proper work visa holder).

2. Yes she would need to be paid a reasonable wage for au pair work.

3. Not a visa issue, but if she is alone with the kids, having her be able to drive would be a good thing to bring them to activities, the playground, or even in case of an emergency.

4. Dean will need to make other arrangements, due to the issue in 1. She may be able to find work in the same city and can be a life-out au pair and also help Dean.