FINAL - Supporting Statement

SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR

PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT SUBMISSION

OMB No. 1405-0170

Training/Internship Placement Plan

Form DS-7002

A. Justification:

1. The U.S. Department of State administers the Exchange Visitor Program under the provisions of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961 (also known as the Fulbright-Hays Act), as amended. This program enables U.S. Government agencies and public and private organizations as Department designated program sponsors, to conduct a variety of educational and cultural exchange activities whereby foreign nationals enter the United States for the purposes of teaching, instructing, studying, observing, conducting research, consulting, demonstrating special skills, or receiving specialized training. Furthermore, Title 8, Section 101(a)(15)(J) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act, authorize the exchange visitor programs that permit foreign nationals to enter the United States for the purpose of participation in designated training and internship programs.

Current regulations set forth at 22 CFR Part 62 govern exchange visitor programs, including trainee and intern programs. Department of State designated sponsors of trainee and intern programs are required to ensure that the participants obtain skills, knowledge, and competencies through structured activities such as classroom training, seminars, and on-the-job training. 22 CFR 62.22(i) requires program sponsors to develop a training or internship plan for each trainee or intern (Form DS-7002). Form DS-7002 has streamlined the training plan process for sponsors, exchange visitors and the Department.

2. The information on the Form DS-7002 sets forth the terms and conditions of the training or internship program, and serves to document the obligations of the three parties that are involved - the trainee or intern, sponsor, and the third party placement organization, if a third party organization is used in the conduct of the training or internship.

Sponsors of programs under the trainee or intern category must complete Form DS-7002 for each prospective trainee or intern. Form DS-7002 is to be completed and signed by the sponsor and signed by the third party supervisor, prior to the issuance of Form DS-2019 (Certificate of Eligibility for Exchange Visitor Status, OMB # 1405-0119). When completed, Form DS-7002 is sent to the prospective exchange visitor abroad who takes it to the U.S. Embassy/Consulate, along with his/her Form DS-2019, to apply for an Exchange Visitor Program (J-NONIMMIGRANT) visa. The completed DS-7002 provides the information that the consular official needs in order to determine whether the individual named on Form DS-2019 will be participating in a bona fide training or internship program. With a favorable determination of eligibility, a J-NONIMMIGRNT visa may be issued.

The information collected will be used by Department officials responsible for the administrative oversight of the Exchange Visitor Program to monitor the compliance of designated exchange visitor program sponsors with program regulations.

3. Pursuant to the provisions established in Subtitle D, Section 641 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) (Public Law 104-208), as amended, the Department worked with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003 to meet a Congressional mandate to develop an electronic system, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System or SEVIS, to collect and submit information on foreign nationals entering the United States on F, J, and M (nonimmigrant) visas. This system is currently being expanded to achieve better efficiencies and functionality. Form DS-7002 has already been incorporated into SEVIS so that 100% of the data may be collected electronically.

4. Form DS-7002 does not collect information that exists elsewhere.

5. There is minimal impact on small business entities. The Department of State estimates that the approximately 120 program sponsors, which are usually small business entities or non-profit organizations, use Form DS-7002. The information collected is only that which is required by the Department of State or DHS to meet legislative and regulatory requirements. The data entered through the electronic form by sponsors is stored electronically, thus making it possible for the user to make adjustments to specific fields of information on the form, as needed, without having the user complete a new form in its entirety.

6. After more than six years of use, Form DS-7002 and the data collection therein have brought certainty, clarity and uniformity to facilitation of training and internship programs conducted under the aegis of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961, as amended. Form DS-7002 must be completed prior to issuance of Form DS-2019 and has streamlined the process to the benefit of the exchange visitor, sponsor and the Department. Sponsors must have a completed Form DS-7002 for each trainee or intern accepted into their program and must maintain a copy of Form DS-7002 for a minimum of three years following completion of the exchange participant’s exchange program. The Department requests copies of these forms during a review of a complaint or compliance issue.

7. There are no special circumstances associated with Form DS-7002.

7. The Department published a 60-day notice in the Federal Register on September 20, 2017 soliciting public comments (82 FR 44023). Only three comments were received. One comment was determined not to be specific enough to make changes to the form. Two other comments refer only to the paper “fillable” format of Form DS-2002, not to the SEVIS paperless fillable version that the Department has created so that the data is available in the SEVIS database. The DS-7002 is a relatively new form. The Department will focus more in the future on educating sponsors on how to use the SEVIS fillable document (we did have sponsors come in to learn how to use the form in the year it was released). The SEVIS version already does much what these two commenters would like to see changed.

Individual comments on the DS-2002 have been noted in the table below in column 1, the commenter(s) in column 2, and the Department’s response to the comment in column 3.

Comment	Department reply
Time to collect information in the online form is not adequately reflected in the allocated 1.5 hours; 1.5 hours is the amount of time sponsors need to create the form. Suggest adding 30-45 minutes per form.	Add thirty-minutes to the burden time for Form DS-7002, making the total burden 2 hours.
Allow Form DS-2019 to be populated online or imported to SEVIS as a scanned PDF.	Changes to the back-end technology of this SEVIS-connected form cannot be made until DHS finishes its current update of SEVIS, of which this form is a part. The earliest this could occur with current DHS funding would be in three years’ time. In addition, we need the DS-7002 Form to populate into SEVIS, so submitting a stationery PDF version of the form does not meet the Department’s oversight need.
Either remove the occupational category list or add a drop-down menu.	The SEVIS version of the form already has a drop-down menu. This menu must have only those occupational categories under the main exchange category for which a sponsor is designated, so the fillable form does not offer this option due to the limits of the form type, while the SEVIS form does offer this option. These options can be checked there by the sponsor prior to filling in the paper form.
Change Title in section 2 to “Host Organization Information”	Change title in Section 2 to “Host Organization Information”
Make clear that the address required in Section 2 is the site of activity. Change to Phase Site Address	Change to Phase Site Address in Section 2
Compensation – Alter the form to have three parts to this section (stipend information and dollar amount, additional compensation information and amount, and listing of total compensation encompassing stipend and additional compensation.	The Department feels that this would make the compensation sections of the form too complex. It is important to the Department to have one figure that denotes intern/trainee overall compensation.
Make the stipend field larger	Make stipend field larger. There is already very large amount of space on the SEVIS form. We have tried also to give more space on the fillable form.
Add check-boxes to reflect non-monetary compensation.	Added check box for non-monetary compensation
Change Workers Compensation section of add instead of “If so, Name of Carrier,” to “If Yes, Name of Carrier.”	Change form to read “If Yes, Name of Carrier.”
Remove “program number” from Section 4, as it is redundant	This number on the SEVIS version of the form populates automatically from the Form DS-2019. It is not redundant for each phase of an internship/traineeship to list the program number for each phase.
Remove current phrasing in Section 4 regarding supervisor, phase site name and address, and add more space for host organizations to write about each phase.	There is a great deal of space on the SEVIS version of the form for the sponsor to provide this information. The Department will try to add more space on the non-SEVIS fillable form. The Department wishes to keep information collected in this section about each training phase the same as it is. The current wording very accurately reflects what the Department would like to collect in order to learn more about each internship/traineeship phase.

7. Respondents are not provided with any gifts or payments.

7. There are no assurances of confidentiality of the information provided in connection with the Exchange Visitor Program regulations.

7. There are no questions of a sensitive nature on the Form DS-7002.

12. Each year, approximately 120 sponsors will be responsible for completing a Form DS-7002 for each of the 30,000 prospective exchange visitors in the trainee and intern categories. Each form takes approximately 2 hours to complete. Based on these figures it is estimated that the annual hour burden on respondents will be 60,000 hours (2 hours x 30,000 responses). The annualized labor cost to respondents is estimated at $1,890,000 (30,000 interns/trainees x $31.50 weighted hourly wage x 2 hours), based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2016 estimation of labor costs for non-profit and for-profit educational services employees. See https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/nonprofit-pay-and-benefits.htm

13. We estimate that there will be no costs to the respondents other than the annualized labor costs. No fee is charged in connection with this form. The respondents are required to fill out the form, keep a copy for their files and provide a copy to the exchange visitor program participant and third party, if applicable. It is expected that respondents currently have full capacity to complete, process, and send the form to participants electronically as part of their current usual and customary business practices.

14. It is estimated that the annualized cost to the Federal Government is limited to the salary and benefits of Department officials responsible for the administrative oversight of the training and internship sponsors submitting this information. The total estimated annual cost to the Federal Government is $6,300. Three employees (GS-9 to GS-13) with an average hourly weighted wage of $63.00, will spend approximately five percent of their time, or 100 hours, processing the forms (reviewing them for accuracy and their adherence to the educational goals of the J-Nonimmigrant category of 22 CFR Part 62). This yields an annual cost of $6,300.00 (100 hours x $63.00 weighted hourly wage). Costs for equipment, overhead, printing, or other costs associated with the processing of this information collection are expected to be negligible.

15. There are no adjustments to the number of respondents. There is an adjustment to cost burden, as it has now been calculated based on the number of program participants (not sponsors) multiplied by the number of hours respondents (sponsors) need to complete the form multiplied by $31.50 for the hourly weighted wage of educational services employees and an additional half-hour for respondents to gather information to use while filling out the form (30,000 participants x 2 hours x $31.50=$1,890,000). Previously, the calculation was done using only the number of sponsors, not the number of participants. In addition, for the sake of consistency, we have calculated the weighted wage of sponsor employees at $31.50 per hour, using Bureau of Labor Statistics 2016 figures for educational services employees in the for-profit and non-profit sectors as stated at https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/nonprofit-pay-and-benefits.htm .

In addition, several changes have been made to the wording of Form DS-7002: Additional space has been allocated to answering the essay questions on pages 3 and 4. Section 2, which previously was titled “Compensation,” has been revised to read “Host Organization Information. In that section, “Address” has been revised to read “Phase site address.” The format of the Sub-section on Compensation has been revised so that compensation and non-monetary compensation values are on different lines. The address for submitting the form has changed.

16. The Department will not publish the information collected.

17. The Department will display the OMB expiration date.

18. The Department is not requesting any exceptions to the certification.

B. COLLECTIONS OF INFORMATION EMPLOYING STATISTICAL METHODS.

This collection does not employ statistical methods.