TWO J-1 VISA JOBS WANTED ASAP.

Not sure - they are only 18 and 20, so my hunch is that they don't. They were ostensibly supposed to be coming over for lifeguard jobs on Virginia Beach before their contact did his bait-and-switch ("ooh, darn, that fell through, but I have another offer for you here in Brooklyn...").

Good questions all; and I think the cattywampus nature of how we've been going about this is because, as I told the job referral service I spoke to today, "we're just a bunch of computer geeks trying to be helpful" and don't really know the professional way to go about this. :-)

Part of the haphhazard way of us doing things is because we're all reeling from how big the problem is, so some of us are jumping in and volunteering to help with specific tasks ("I'll take care of finding them a lawyer", "I'll take care of helping them get in touch with their family", "I'll give them a place to stay") and so we're a little all over the place. Someone else has indeed set them up with a lawyer, so they're set on that front. I THINK that by now they have spoken to the Russian consulate, but they didn't prove to be very helpful in the initial phase of things (a number of us called the Russian consulate on their behalf while they were in a bus on their way here, but they didn't prove useful).

As for "why would they want to accept help from strangers," the thing is that one person from Metafilter is NOT a stranger. Someone from MeFi befriended the two of them while he was teaching English a couple years ago and they'd been online "pen pals" ever since; they contacted him when they were initially on their way here as a sort of giddy, "Guess what, we're coming to the US!" email, and their explaining the subsequent "so our first job fell through, but they have another job for us in Brooklyn they say" story is what started this all off (they told him about how "they're setting up a job in Brooklyn for us" and something sounded off about that so he turned to Metafilter to ask "does this sound weird to all of you too?" and that's how the rest of us got involved). So the reason that they are accepting help from us is because this friend of theirs is vouching for all of us.

Going home is indeed an option, but it sounds like they really want to see if staying here is still an option as well.

I've actually since spoken to another similar job-placement agency -- a legitimate one, in this instance -- and they've since told me that it isn't a matter any more of us just finding another job and letting them apply; the girls will have to contact the original sponsor from their original job (a third party entirely, that is not the original lifeguard job they were supposed to have AND is not the agency who organized the work in the first place). But that sponsor also will help them find another actual work situation, so I'm sitting on my hands at present.