Jyothi Renny says she learned about her $30,000 debt when she received a phone call in January from her old employer, a health care staffing firm called MedPro International. MedPro had accused Renny of violating her employment contract by quitting too soon. What Renny didnt know until the phone call was that the case had already gone to arbitration. Renny had lost.

They said, There is a judgment. Its 30-something thousand dollars you have to pay, Renny, 50, said in an interview.

Renny had come from India in 2021 to work as a nurse in a St. Louis hospital during the pandemic. Travel nurses pay was soaring, but she says she received just $27 per hour well below market rate at the time and struggled to support her husband and two kids in an expensive and unfamiliar country. Within three months she had exhausted her savings and was slipping into debt, she told MedPro in a resignation email. She quit and moved to Texas for a job she says roughly doubled her pay.

But under the terms of her contract, Renny could be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in damages if she resigned before working three years. She was also bound by mandatory arbitration, which waived her right to sue the company in court. And she had agreed to cover the companys legal fees if an arbitrator ruled against her. MedPro had sought and won an additional $1,250 from her to pay for its attorney.

Renny is one of many foreign nurses who come to the U.S. and soon feel stuck in their jobs, thanks to what critics call stay-or-pay contracts. The agreements require workers to put in a minimum number of hours before leaving, or else theyll have to pay back thousands of dollars the staffing firm says they owe for licensing, travel, housing and other expenses. The MedPro contracts viewed by HuffPost also include a mandatory arbitration clause.

Although MedPro says it served notice to Renny by both mail and email, Renny says she was unaware of the arbitration proceedings until they were over. She suspects the mail never reached her because of her move to Texas, and any emails about it may have landed in her spam folder.

MedPro declined to address specific workers allegations in this story. But the company said in a statement that it incurs major costs getting nurses set up for U.S. employment, including educational credentialing, English proficiency exams, visa screening and immigration approval, as well as a four-week orientation program. By taking workers to arbitration, the company says, its merely trying to recoup a substantial investment it made.

The process to prepare a foreign-educated nurse to work in the U.S. healthcare system is complex, costly, and takes years to complete, making it very difficult for these foreign nurses to perform on their own, the company said. Most simply do not have the financial means to pay for these upfront activities and without the MedPro funding, would be unable to secure a better life for themselves and their family in the U.S.

But Rachel Dempsey, an attorney for Renny and several other former MedPro nurses, said the contracts prey on people who dont know very much about the United States.

They dont know what the cost of living is, said Dempsey, whose nonprofit law firm, Towards Justice, has assisted other workers with employment-related debts. They dont know what a good salary is. And they dont understand the U.S. legal system.

Mandatory arbitration can present an additional challenge.

MedPros contract with Renny stated that all claims by either party that otherwise could be brought in a federal, state, or local court must go before an arbitrator instead. The contract also prevents workers from trying to band together in a class action lawsuit, where they might get a favorable settlement or a sympathetic jury. And it keeps the disputes largely out of the public eye, since arbitration proceedings are generally confidential and tend not to land on court dockets.

Renny says a MedPro representative told her she could ruin her credit by not paying the judgment. So she signed a settlement agreement with a payment plan: three installments of $10,000 apiece. But when her father passed away unexpectedly in India, her hopes for a family loan fell through, she said.

I couldnt get the money, Renny said. Then they went to court.