At a time when fewer young Americans are finding work, hundreds of thousands of foreign students have taken jobs through a controversial U.S. visa program.

The Summer Work Travel program has grown into a $100 million international industry, providing temporary jobs at venues ranging from Alaskan fisheries to Florida theme parks.

Touted as a "cultural exchange," there's a dark side to SWT and its J-1 visa program, which, at times, looks more like a human-trafficking operation for cheap labor.

Young women have been dragooned into strip clubs, despite State Department regulations that expressly prohibit that kind of work, and some students complain of sexual abuse or physical neglect at the hands of their employers.

ZM Studios, a broker for topless dancers, brazenly advertised on its website: "If you wish to dance in USA as a J-1 exchange visitor, contact us." The ad said ZM Studios is "affiliated with designated visa sponsors" and can get women J-1 visas and jobs at topless clubs in cities like Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

In Florida, a 19-year-old Russian told the Associated Press she went to work as a cocktail waitress at a topless bar in Fort Walton Beach because the souvenir shop where she worked didn't pay much and the shop owner had her living in a crowded, rundown apartment.

Elsewhere, exchange student Munkh-Erdene Battur said he and four other Mongolian nationals were fired from their fast-food jobs in Riverton, Wyo., after complaining about being forced to pay $350 apiece per month to live in a converted garage.

"In my whole life, I've never lived in that kind of place and that kind of conditions," Battur told the AP.

A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies says the rapid growth of SWT over the past 15 years illustrates a troubling trend in the nation’s immigration system, "where new programs are created and allowed to expand significantly without giving careful consideration to their impact on the labor market or the larger American society."

"There's been a massive failure on the part of the United States to bring any accountability to the temporary work visa programs, and it's especially true for the J-1," agrees Terry Coonan, a former prosecutor and the executive director of Florida State University's Center for the Advancement of Human Rights.

The CIS report, "Cheap Labor as Cultural Exchange," found that the foreign-student work program:

• Displaces young Americans from the workplace at a time of record levels of youth unemployment.
• Provides incentives for employers to bypass American workers by exempting SWT employers from taxes that apply to employment of Americans. Employers also don’t have to worry about providing health insurance, since SWT students are required to buy it for themselves.
• Puts downward pressure on wages because it gives employers access to workers from poor countries who are eager to come to the United States, not just to earn money but also to travel within the country and burnish their resumes by learning English.

Because J-1 visa holders pay an average of about $1,100 in fees to private brokers that serve as SWT sponsors, the program generates well over $100 million in annual revenues for those organizations, CIS estimates. Students pay many millions more in visa fees to the State Department and in travel expenses to and from the United States.

"Many [J-1 visa holders] are virtually indentured to U.S. employers and are therefore unable to challenge low pay and poor working and housing conditions," report author Jerry Kammer said.

Last year, 103,000 foreign students obtained J-1 visas to work in the United States. At the same time, the total number of U.S. youths aged 16-24 not working hit a record high of 18.5 million this summer, an increase of 7.2 million since 2000.

The underemployment of young, college-age workers predates the current economic downturn.