Prince George's County owes Filipino teachers $4 million
The Washington Post is reporting today that the Prince George's school system will have to pay foreign teachers $4.2 million in wages that were withheld from them. A federal investigation has concluded that the teachers had to pay visa application fees before they came to the United States in order to get jobs in Prince George's. The fees essentially lowered the total compensation for the foreign teachers compared to the American teachers. "It is appalling that a schoo ldistrict illegally and unfairly exploited workers who came from other countries to teach in Americand schools," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in a statement released today.
The school system is being fined as much as $1.7 million, the paper reports.
The next question is whether Baltimore's Filipino teachers also had to pay for their visa application fees and whether Baltimore may be the next city to be investigated. Hundreds of Filipino teachers were brought to the city about half a dozen years ago when the school district didn't have enough qualified teachers to fill the empty teaching jobs. Today, the city is hiring few teachers and no longer recruits in the Philippines. The AFT has called attention to similar abuses in other states.
Baltimoresun.com's 
Comments
Where does Baltimore stand with the Filipino teachers?
Posted by: elisabeth | April 4, 2011 10:33 PM
What about Baltimore County? They also recruited in the Philipines and brought teachers here.
Posted by: ann | April 5, 2011 11:43 PM
Why should anyone in the US have to pay Immigrantion fees for someone entering the US.? It was their free choice to come to America to work. If they want to come here and work, they should have to pay their own way here.
Posted by: JoeB | April 6, 2011 12:45 PM
@JoeB:
All employers who hire employees under the H1B system, (as I understand from the article) are required to cover the fees for that visa. By avoiding this, and forcing them to pay these fees themselves, the school system was technically lowering their promised salaries, sometimes by as much as $10,000
And, while it is true that it was their choice to come here to work, the priviledge of having the Philipino teachers come is OURS, not theirs.
We are not able to fill all those empty spots because we don't have enough home-grown teachers certified in those critical areas. Which is why we are recruiting in the Philipines to begin with.
Posted by: Robin Bingham | April 7, 2011 5:57 PM
ann-- I think I understand your point. But it would be like going to McDonalds, and finding out the guy behind the register decided to over charge me by 5 bucks on his own. Yes I chose to go there, yes I chose to pay the money-- but the guy behind the register still would have done something wrong by taking money from me that he was not entitled to.
JoeB@ ,
Great point. The requirement to pay the visa costs for the foreign worker would act as an incentive to hire an American if their is one that can fill the position. The foreign worker's contribution would have to good enough to compensate for that increased cost of their employment:
The system creates or at least keeps opportunities for Americans, and prevents foreign workers from being exploited if we need their expertise. This is not a bad system.
Posted by: adrifter | May 6, 2011 6:09 PM
Your concepts were easy to understand that I wondered why I never looked at it prior to. Glad to find out that there's a blogger out there that certainly understands what he's discussing. Excellent.
Posted by: joan | May 12, 2011 3:02 AM