NEA study on H-1B/J-1 teachers
NEA study on H-1B/J-1 teachers
Date: Wednesday, August 18, 2004 3:10 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
August 18, 2004 - No. 1079
The National Education Association published a comprehensive study on
the use of nonimmigrant school teachers in the USA. A summary of the
study can be read at:
http://www.nea.org/teachershortage/0306foreignteacher.html
The complete study is at:
http://www.nea.org/teachershortage/images/foreignteacher.pdf
The NEA did a good job of gathering statistics, but the best they can
seem to suggest for stopping the exploitation of foreign teachers is to
better enforce the flawed H-1B rules. Worse yet, they totally agree
that there is a teacher shortage. Despite the fact that the NEA seems
to support H-1B the data provides some useful insight into the use of
nonimmigrant teachers in the U.S.
The intro contains lots of shortage shouting as well as their
justification for hiring foreign teachers instead of looking for
educated professionals in the U.S. who are in need of these jobs.
The dearth of U.S. educators in some specialty areas
- and a shortage of those willing to work in urban schools
- is helping to create a growing global market for teachers.
NEA's report profiles trends in foreign teacher recruitment.
Below are a few interesting factoids from the study with a few of my
own comments. The complete study is worth looking at because it
contains a large amount of data and information that is too detailed
for the scope of this newsletter. They provide a table with the number
of H-1B teachers broken down by school systems that is definitely worth
a look, especially for parents with school age kids.
***** Excerpts and Comments *****
-- Public school systems throughout the country are utilizing the
services of perhaps as many as 10,000 foreign teachers in primary and
secondary schools on "nonimmigrant" work or cultural exchange visas.
COMMENT: That's probably an undercount, because later on they say the
number is more like 15,000.
-- At least to this point, the use of these temporary employees appears
to have been largely driven by efforts to address perceived teacher
shortages, particularly in specific disciplines such as math, science,
foreign languages, and special education, as well as in "less
desirable" poor urban and rural school districts.
COMMENT: There is no shortage of teachers but there is a shortage of
school districts that want to pay a fair salary. Continue below and you
will see that the NEA admits that H-1B teachers are paid less.
-- The two temporary work visas used to hire foreign teachers are the
"H-1B" Specialty Occupation Program and the "J-1" Exchange Visitor
Program.
COMMENT: In theory J-1 visas are for foreign students, but schools have
stretched the meaning to include student teachers. This is a glaring
loophole to avoid H-1B limits that should not be allowed.
-- Public school authorities - individual schools, districts and state
education agencies - are the largest single type of "importer" of
foreign educators for public schools. While precise numbers are
extremely difficult to obtain, public school systems currently employ
an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 teachers under the H-1B program and an
additional 3,000 or more under the J-1 program. Many public schools
throughout the country have developed extensive H-1B foreign teacher
recruitment efforts and twenty-two states and ten school boards have
secured official "designation" as J-1 Exchange Visitor Program
sponsors.
COMMENT: Schools are using J-1 visas roughly half as often as H-1Bs.
This gives them a very convenient way to avoid the yearly H-1B cap.
-- A private firm, Visiting International Faculty, is the largest
single sponsor of nonimmigrant teachers, having placed approximately
1,800 under the auspices of the J-1 program during the 2002-03 school
year.
COMMENT: VIF is a teacher bodyshop. There are many more mentioned in
the report.
-- While nonimmigrant teachers seem generally to be paid the same as
their co-workers, some foreign teachers receive lower pay than
comparable teachers in their schools. For example, there is at least
anecdotal evidence that, absent a collective bargaining agreement or
law or policy, some school districts pay their nonimmigrant employees
as new teachers, regardless of their experience and qualifications.
COMMENT: This paragraph is one of the most important and revealing
passages in the entire document, because it explains how school
districts can avoid paying prevailing salary - they hire their foreign
teachers as new hires at starting salaries. High-tech companies use the
same technique - they hire senior programmers but call them junior
coders so that they can underpay them.
-- A quite troubling dynamic in both the H-1B and J-1 programs is the
inherently temporary and legally precarious status of nonimmigrant
teachers. Because their sponsor constructively controls their visa,
they are effectively "at will" employees.
COMMENT: This is why I often refer to H-1B as an indentured labor
program.
-- The Teacher Shortage and School District Efforts to Combat it with
Foreign Teacher Recruitment
There is widespread agreement that the nations public schools will
face a serious challenge as they struggle to fill a projected 2 million
teacher vacancies over the next decade.
COMMENT: Unfortunately the NEA agrees that there is a teacher shortage,
and they think foreign teachers will be needed to fill the vacancies.
The NEA is supposed to be a teacher's union but it's obvious that they
advocate for the schools that employ teachers and not the actual
teachers.
-- The state of Texas accounted for the largest number of
certifications, by far, with 3,310, followed by California (1,047),
Illinois (543), New York (538), Georgia (326), New Jersey (239),
Florida (235), Maryland (227), and Ohio (218).
-- Most immediately, the impending return to the cap of 65,000 annual
H-1B visa approvals will almost certainly lead to a push by employer
groups to raise the cap again. It is also conceivable that K-12
employers will push to be excluded from the cap entirely, in line with
the institutions of higher education.
COMMENT: There is a growing list of employers that are pushing for an
increase in the H-1B visa cap. It appears that K-12 employers want to
be exempted so that they can hire unlimited numbers of foreign
teachers.
-- The employer is also required to maintain copies of its H-1B LCA
applications and supporting documentation either at the employers
headquarters or at the work location, and to make them available for
public inspection.
COMMENT: Teachers that read this newsletter should know that they have
a legal right to see the LCAs of the H-1Bs that their school is hiring.
If anyone is willing to make photocopies of the LCAs I would be happy
to put them online. There is nothing illegal about doing this because
LCAs are public domain.
-- According to Dale Ziegler, former Chief of the DOLs Division of
Foreign Labor Certification (which controls the H-1B authorization
process at the department), the H-1B LCA certification process is
virtually automatic now. "Its like water through a tap unless there
is an obvious error."
COMMENT: Ziegler's comment is one to remember. I will put it on the
ZaZona website.
-- There is no requirement that an employer actually demonstrate a
critical skills shortage or any other kind of workforce need, other
than certifying that any workers hired will be paid the prevailing
wage, provided with comparable benefits and working conditions, that
regular employees working conditions will not be adversely affected,
and that there is no current strike, lockout or work stoppage in the
specified occupation and location. "We dont look behind the
applications as long as theyve passed the edit checks," Ziegler
says.
COMMENT: I have been repeating this for years but the press just won't
accept the truth from us. Be sure to use this quote if a reporter asks
you whether Americans are given first consideration for jobs. Perhaps
they will believe Ziegler.
-- Many employers file multiple applications for LCA certifications and
others submit applications well beyond their needs in anticipation of a
possible future need. According to Ziegler and others, only about
one-third of the total LCA certifications actually result in a visa
being issued. A perhaps extreme example of employers filing multiple
applications and for numbers beyond their current needs can be seen
with Educational Testing Service. According to the Labor Departments
H-1B database, between late November 2001 and early March 2002, ETS
received approval for 1,900 H-1B visa "essay readers." According to the
DOL database, ETS had previously been denied certification for 1,400
essay readers, in filings from March 2001 through November 2001.
COMMENT: Employers that apply for more H-1B visas than they need are
said to be banking LCAs. Ziegler is referring to banking in the
paragraph above. As you can see, your kids may be getting tested by
H-1Bs.
-- For example, Chicago, the nation's third-largest school district and
the second-largest employer in Illinois, was reported in 2001 to be
seeking to hire 3,500 new teachers for 2001-2002 school year. Through a
special program called Global Educator Outreach (GEO), the citys
school system hired more than 130 teachers from 35 countries, including
Japan, India, Colombia, Pakistan, Ghana, Jamaica and Mexico.
-- According to a 2001 USA Today report, the Atlanta public school
system has 400 to 500 vacancies a year, and recruiters have "scoured
the earth for teachers," says spokesman Seth Coleman. Recruiting trips
have taken school officials to Jamaica, South Africa and Canada,
according to the paper.
-- Similarly, USA Today reported that Los Angeles Unified School
District is "always chasing somewhere around 4,000" teacher vacancies
annually, according to Anthonio Garcia, director of recruitment, and
that the system hired about two dozen teachers been hired from Spain,
Mexico, Canada and the Philippines for the 2001-2002 school year.
-- School districts in Texas are, by far, the most active recruiters of
nonimmigrant teachers for public schools,
-- Along with many other employers, HSID uses the Economic Research
Institute to help determine prevailing wages.11 This company is cited
as the source of prevailing wage data in over 10,000 individual LCA
applications processed by the Labor Department during FY 2001 and FY
2002. ERI, based in Redmond, Washington, provides employers with
comparative salary, compensation and cost of living data, based on
large, proprietary surveys that it conducts (http://www.erieri.com).
COMMENT: The H-1B certification allows employers to choose the salary
survey to justify their salary offers. ERI is a private company that
charges for prevailing salary surveys. There is an obvious conflict of
interest because if they don't provide low enough prevailing salary
surveys employers can take their business elsewhere.
-- SELECTED THIRD-PARTY TEACHER RECRUITMENT, PLACEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT
AGENCIES
COMMENT: This is a list of foreign teacher bodyshops with some
revealing excerpts about how they operate.
1. Visiting International Faculty (VIF)
VIF grew steadily, if modestly, until 1995, when the State Department
designated the company as an Exchange Visitor Program sponsor, giving
it the authority to issue J-1 visas. This designation19, which is valid
for renewable five-year terms, permits VIF to sponsor foreign teachers
for employment using J-1 nonimmigrant visas, for three renewable
one-year terms. The company is now in eight states, having sponsored
about 1,800 teachers during the 2002-2003 school year (see Table 4 on
the next page for details). It is expanding into Florida for the
2003-2004 school year. There appears to be no formal cap on the number
of teachers that VIF may sponsor.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
VIF receives the stated $11,000 to $11,500 per placement, its roughly
1,800 teachers would produce about $20 million in gross annual fees.
This estimate does not count any additional funding it receives to pay
salaries for teachers who are VIF rather than school district
employees.
2. Foreign Academic & Cultural Exchange Services, Inc. (FACES)
Foreign Academic & Cultural Exchange Services, Inc. is a designated J-1
teacher visa sponsor. It is a private, for-profit company based in
South Carolina. FACES only operates in South Carolina and sponsored 128
teachers during the 2002-2003 school year.
3. Amity Institute
The Amity Institute is a non-profit organization, formed in 1962, and
headquartered in San Diego, California. Amity runs a number of cultural
and educational exchange programs, including its sponsorship of J-1
visa Exchange Teachers (ETs). The institutes $3,000 fee is much
lower than VIFs standard $11,000-$11,500 fee, but it also covers
much less.
4. Teachers Placement Group
The most notorious H-1B teacher recruitment agency is a firm called the
Teachers Placement Group, based in Plainview, New York, which recruited
at least 100 educators from India in 2001.
In 2002, fifteen Indian teachers who were brought to
teach math and science in Newark schools went public
with the charge that TGP was extorting part of their
wages from them and violating US labor and immigration
laws.
Press reports from other cities indicate that TPG ran
into varying degrees of trouble over its fee and
compensation practices in Philadelphia, Cleveland,
Upper Chester, and Carroll County
In a press release, the DOL confirmed the teachers
charges, saying that its investigation "determined
that the employers had coerced and threatened the
teachers with deportation, reducing their wages below
the legally required wage rate."
5. Global Teachers Research & Resources, Inc., RK Resourcing, Inc.,
Silandi Corporation, International Teachers Recruitment, and Dasigi
Overseas Staffing: A Network of Firms Focused On Recruiting Teachers
from India
6. Superior Management Group (and 14 Affiliated Companies)
An interesting case of a company seemingly "gaming" the H-1B
application system is represented by California-based Superior
Management and its 14 affiliated companies. These firms have applied
for and received certification for 437 H-1B teacher visa
authorizations. Each of the affiliated companies submitted four to
twelve separate applications for one to seven authorized slots. Gurjeet
Singh was listed on all of the applications as the "director of the
applicant."
"We recruit teachers from India, mostly for elementary schools," Singh
said in a telephone conversation.
7. IntelAge, Inc.
IntelAge recruits teachers from India in all fields, but specialize in
middle and high school math, science, and K-12 Special Education.
8. Universal Placement Services, Inc.
Universal Placement Services, Inc., variously listed as located in
Plantation or Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Included in these are teacher
positions with salaries either at $862.38 biweekly, or $14.04 per hour.
Jose Acevido is listed as the administrator and Jason Santiago is
listed as the contact person.
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