New Report Shows Schools Increasingly Hiring Foreign Teachers Over Americans

An interesting, timely post from www.fairus.us as we start the school year. For more on this topic, click here to view a story about how this is affecting the health care debate.


New Report Shows Schools Increasingly Hiring Foreign Teachers Over Americans
A report released last week by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) entitled "Importing Educators: Causes and Consequences of International Teacher Recruitment" has revealed that "some American school districts have turned increasingly to overseas recruiting to find teachers" to fill teaching vacancies. The findings in the new report raise questions regarding proper levels of legal immigration and, in particular, the H-1B visa program. (AFT Report; The New York Times, September 15, 2009).
According to the report, nearly 20,000 teachers were working in the United States on temporary visas in 2007, and that number is increasing steadily. The report contains a case study of the Baltimore Public School District and notes that the city had hired 108 teachers from the Philippines in 2005. Just two years later, more than 600 Filipino teachers are now working in Baltimore classrooms, comprising more than 10% of the district's teaching workforce. The report went on to assert that Baltimore school officials were leaning so heavily on these foreign teachers to fill job vacancies in their district that they were recruiting less aggressively in the United States: "Rather than attending job fairs throughout the Mid-Atlantic, trying to persuade reluctant American teachers to accept positions in troubled inner-city schools, HR officials can meet all their hiring needs in one trip. At a single career fair in Manila, they can interview hundreds of pre-screened applicants, each of whom is eager to pay for the opportunity to work in Baltimore city schools." (Id.).
The AFT's findings imply that international teacher recruitment is displacing American teachers. Amid the current economic recession, declining tax revenues have forced many state and local governments to lay off teachers. (The Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2009). Why, then, are school districts across the country increasingly recruiting foreign teachers to come to the United States to fill teaching vacancies? The AFT report suggests a possible answer: in one school district, foreign born teachers were "paid only $18,000 per teacher for their services, well below prevailing wage." (AFT Report).
The AFT report also points out that many foreign teachers are being brought to the United States on H-1B visas. The H-1B visa program allows employers to bring foreign workers to the United States to work in specialty occupations that require "the theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge and a bachelor's degree or the equivalent in the specific specialty." (Department of Labor). However, some — most notably Bill Gates of Microsoft — have put forth the misconception that the H-1B program exists primarily to bring foreign workers to the United States to work in technology-related fields. Gates has then leveraged this misconception to lobby Congress to increase the H-1B visa cap so that companies such as Microsoft can have access to more cheap foreign labor. (See FAIR's Legislative Update, March 24, 2008).