The Great Au Pair Rush

When the au pair decided to change families, she feared she was taking a major risk.

Since the fall, the Colombian woman in her mid-20s had been working in New York as an au pair, one of about 20,000 young people — mostly women — who come to the United States each year to live with families and take care of their children. Her yearlong contract wasn’t set to expire until late 2020, but one morning in mid-June, an argument with her host dad proved to be the breaking point of a tense home environment in quarantine.

“I can’t take these people anymore,” the au pair texted me in Spanish. “I want to get out of here today.” She reported the situation to her local coordinator and decided to leave, giving her two weeks to find a new family or return to Colombia. She hadn’t the slightest clue where she would end up next.

But the woman’s anxiety turned to surprise a few days later when she checked her email — she already had dozens of families across the country asking for interviews. Normally, the demand for au pairs already in the United States is not nearly as high, but something had changed: On June 22, the Trump administration issued an executive order suspending many foreign work visas at least until the end of this year. The order included the J-1 visa program, under which the au pair program, managed by the State Department, is categorized.

While the coronavirus pandemic had already made international travel difficult for many, the visa restrictions confirmed that new au pairs preparing to come to the United States wouldn’t be able to enter the country. The American families expecting them, often with working parents relying on the program as their primary source of child care, have been left scrambling to find replacements.