They used to besiege the US embassy’s consular section in mid-spring – waiting for their turn for a brief interview in the mornings and a second assault in the afternoon, to get back their passports with the cherished US visa stamp. The lure of untold riches – several thousand dollars for a summer’s worth of work – lured the most, with the opportunity to travel the States a bit not scoffed at either. Places like Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod in Massachusetts had veritable colonies spring up every year – Eastern European students coming to work for the summer.

Incongruously known as "brigadi" in Bulgarian, literally translated as brigades, which evoked a strange association with Soviet party-mandated harvest-time non-optional student labour groups, work-and-travel programmes have been around for more than a decade in Bulgaria. Initially the preserve of very few, since up-front costs could reach as high as $2000 before one even got to the US, rising interest and competition drove prices down, with thousands of students making an annual trip across the Atlantic for several years in a row.

But in recent years, the numerous work-and-travel programmes have not had the same success. After peaking in 2007, when the US embassy issued an estimated 11 500 student visas, the figure halved in 2009, even though the refusal rate remained low at about six per cent.

Some of it, predictably, was caused by the credit crunch and the economic recession in the US, with sponsor companies, the American intermediary layer between employers and students, no longer looking for the same numbers. For students, some of whom clocked upward of 80-hour working weeks and occasionally switching visa types to extend their stay in order to make the most of the opportunity, the weak dollar did not help matters.

Bulgaria’s entry into the European Union and the opening of borders also had its impact, part of the reason why US work-and-travel programmes tend to peak and then decline after several years in other Eastern European countries, according to Matt Keene, deputy consul at the US embassy in Sofia.

But even as opportunities for student work arise in the EU, those are few and limited in scope, often restricted to unqualified farm work – picking strawberries in Britain has become the byword for such programmes.

"I expect the work-and-travel programmes [in the US] will always have an appeal," Keene said. "People want to go see the US and when the economy is good, it can be a very cost-effective way of doing so."