Anonymous wrote:So any registered sex offender, or other criminal, can have a kid and qualify for cheap foreign labor? After they get here and find out the real deal, they'll likely get sent back home if they try to report the abuse?

I know you are a troll with your "cheap foreign labor" comment, but I agree that it is disturbing that actual criminal background checks are not done (again, unless they are not telling us about them). Like the PP said, they do call your references, but of course you can choose references who would lie for you, same as the APs can.

However, if there is abuse that an AP reports, she would most certainly not get sent home. She would be removed from the home immediately, housed by the local area coordinator, and would be given opportunities for rematch. I daresay that in a situation like that, the AP would be given longer than the standard two week rematch period to find a new family. APs are routinely given more than two weeks if their area coordinator feels that they are a good AP, wrongly treated, or otherwise deserve a better chance at staying in the country.

Anonymous wrote:So any registered sex offender, or other criminal, can have a kid and qualify for cheap foreign labor? After they get here and find out the real deal, they'll likely get sent back home if they try to report the abuse?

All the agencies ask for a work reference, personal reference and they do ask "has anyone living in the house been convicted of a crime".

Realistically, if you are applying for an AP, you aren't going to supply the agency with a reference who will not give you a good one. And it's easy enough to lie on the application (just ask all the APs!). We had one HM in our cluster who answered "No" although I know for a fact that she was convicted of a DUI and had a blower in her car! She was booted from the program for other abuses, but that should have been reason enough.

So any registered sex offender, or other criminal, can have a kid and qualify for cheap foreign labor? After they get here and find out the real deal, they'll likely get sent back home if they try to report the abuse?

Anonymous wrote:Which agencies don't do the background checks on the host family?

Unless they are doing them without telling us, Au Pair Care and Au Pair in America do not do background checks. I agree that they should, and do not understand why they don't. The agencies learn very little about a host family from the short in-home visits that they do. But I also agree that most of the problem families that an AP will encounter probably can't be screened out through a background check (e.g. expects more than 45 hours/week or 10 hours/day, doesn't provide all meals, is generally mean, etc.).