AFT Fights Exploitation of Foreign Teachers

by James Parks, Oct 28, 2009

The growing number of overseas-educated teachers in U.S. schools has put many talented educators in classrooms, but the trend also has led to a host of concerns about exploitation, questionable hiring practices and harmful effects in the countries that are losing their most qualified teachers.

An estimated 19,000 migrant teachers work in U.S. schools, according to a recently released report by AFT. ”Importing Educators: Causes and Consequences of International Teacher Recruitment” examines the growing number of allegations that recruiting agencies have intimidated teachers, forced them into housing contracts, misrepresented their pay, charged them exorbitant fees and threatened to pull their visas. These practices continue because the international teacher recruitment industry is almost entirely unregulated, according to teacher union leaders.

In the report, AFT calls for federal, state and local governments to take steps to monitor the hiring and treatment of overseas-trained teachers. In addition, the union is recommending that officials:

• Develop, adopt and enforce ethical standards for the international recruitment of teachers;
• Improve access to the government data necessary to track and study international hiring trends in education; and
• Foster international cooperation to protect migrant workers and mitigate any negative impact of teacher migration in their home countries.

AFT is collecting stories from other teachers who have experience with international recruitment practices. Use this form to send them your story.

Says AFT President Randi Weingarten:

It is an outrage that these abuses are occurring in the United States. The AFT is adamant that all teachers working in our school system must be fairly treated, no matter what country they are from.

Take what happened recently in Louisiana. According to a federal complaint AFT filed with the U.S. Department of Labor Oct. 20, a company that recruited Filipino teachers to work in Louisiana schools cheated those teachers out of thousands of dollars and held them in virtual servitude. The complaint alleges that each teacher recruited by Universal Placement International was forced to pay some $15,000 in fees that federal law dictates should be paid by the employer. The AFT alleges that the recruited teachers paid the money to Universal Placement before working a single day as a teacher, and signed an illegal contract, under duress, requiring payment of additional fees.

Here’s Weingarten:

The allegations, backed by the facts, show these teachers to be victims of worker abuses like the ones in our students’ history books: indentured servitude, debt bondage and labor contracts signed under duress. What makes these allegations especially heinous is that the victims are good teachers, that school districts and tax dollars are involved, and that all this is taking place in 21st-century America.

The teachers came to the United States under the H-1B visa program, which last year brought an estimated 6,000 teachers to the United States to fill hard-to-staff jobs in subjects such as math, foreign languages and special education. The AFL-CIO has called for Congress to reform the H-1B program to eliminate abuses.

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