[Bret L]

Louisiana Hiring Filipino Teachers, Firing Americans—Where Are The
Teacher Unions When We Need Them?

By Rob Sanchez

“It should be recalled that nurse migration to the U.S. began as a small and seemingly innocuous trend in the 1950s. In 2002, one in three nurses hired in the U.S. was foreign educated. Such trends in the health sector may foretell what is to come in education without thoughtful intervention.”
Importing Educators Causes and Consequences of International Teacher
Recruitment, p.5, American Federation for Teachers, 2009 [pdf.]

Will the teaching profession be debauched by H-1B “temporary” workers
as the nursing profession has been?

The above statement by the AFT might seem to suggest that the
notoriously powerful teacher unions are aware of the danger. Here’s
another from the rival union, the National Education Association, in
its 2003 paper REPORT TO THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION ON TRENDS
IN FOREIGN TEACHER RECRUITMENT, by Randy Barber (it’s vanished from
the NEA website, but it’s still available on the Waybackmachine):

"In at least one egregious situation, a “bodyshop”—the Teachers
Placement Group—that was both the sponsor and employer of nonimmigrant
teachers illegally withheld significant amounts of teachers’ pay, an
action that led to large Labor Department fines and back-pay awards."

But American teacher displacement is happening anyway. And the teacher
unions’ response has been distinctly suspicious.

For example: on October 1, the national AFT and its state affiliate,
the Louisiana Federation of Teachers (LFT), filed complaints to the
Louisiana Workforce Commission and the Louisiana Attorney General
against the contract agency Universal Placement International (UPI).
The complaints allege that UPI engaged in illegal practices in order
to defraud Filipino teachers who contracted to work for the Recovery
School District (RSD). (This was created by the Louisiana Department
of Education in 2003 to reform "low performing" schools.)

But what the complaints fail to mention is that the Recovery School
District used those Filipino teachers to replace their senior American
teaching staff—and the unions did nothing to intervene.

Universal Placement International is a contract agency that
specializes in importing guest workers on H-1B visas from the
Philippines to work as K-12 teachers. Businesses of this kind are
called “bodyshops”.

The president and owner of UPI is Lourdes "Lulu" Navarro. She is a
native of the Philippines who immigrated to California. She is also a
convicted felon who has been charged with many other serious crimes
including fraud. This is what the attorney general of California had
to say about her in a June 05, 2000 press release:

Attorney General Lockyer Announces Four Arrests, Two Convictions in
Crackdown on Medi-cal Fraud by Blood Laboratories

“In the earlier case, Shams and Navarro were convicted on felony
counts of Medi-Cal fraud, grand theft, money laundering, and identity
theft for using the names of legitimate physicians without permission
and filing thousands of false claims with the state for medical tests
never performed. The Attorney General's Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and
Elder Abuse seized approximately $1.1 million in uncashed warrants,
which were returned to the Medi-Cal program.

“Clinic owner Navarro was sentenced to five years in prison upon
entering her guilty plea and ordered to pay $200,000 in restitution by
the end of the year. Navarro also was required to surrender her
license as a clinical laboratory scientist and prohibited from owning
or working in any health care business. Orange County Superior Court
Judge Robert Gallivan suspended the prison sentence under a plea
agreement.

“Navarro's partner Shams remains in custody pending sentencing in
October after pleading guilty to charges of Medi-Cal fraud. A third
laboratory owner, Zubair Younis, 42, of Brooklyn, N.Y., is being
sought on a felony warrant."

UPI is almost certainly a Minority and “Woman-Owned” Business
Enterprise (I say "almost certainly" because I haven't been able to
confirm that UPI is registered in a state as such—and that may be
because it is being delisted). Affirmative action rules give these
companies a huge competitive advantage when seeking government
contracts. The rationale is that minority owned companies add to the
“diversity” of the workforce—look at this picture to see the face of
diversity at UPI.

Here’s a timeline of events in Louisiana:

* 2003: The Recovery School District (RSD) was created by the
Louisiana Department of Education. The purpose was to reform "low
performing" schools.
* August 29, 2005: Hurricane Katrina strikes Louisiana. The
hurricane destroyed or severely damaged thousands of schools and
universities in the Gulf coast states. Over 250,000 students had no
school to attend. Thousands of teachers were instantly jobless.
* November 2005: Over 107 "low-performing" schools were put into
the RSD.
* May 4, 2007: Louisiana Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek
appointed Paul Vallas to be superintendent of the RSD.
* Summer 2007: RSD superintendent Vallas says his operation is
suffering a severe teacher shortage. (Note carefully: less than two
years after Katrina displaced thousands of teachers.)
* May 30, 2008: A memo sent out to board members about a junket to
the Philippines to hire teachers.
* June 20, 2008: School officials go on an all-expense paid junket
to the Philippines.
* July 15, 2008: Board members send around emails about the
Filipino teachers.
* August 5, 2008: Caddo Parish schools notified that Filipinos
with advanced degrees are being hired for low-performing schools. The
implication: Filipino geniuses would replace the incompetent American
teachers. Low-performing schools would now become academic havens.
* September 6, 2008: The first Filipino teachers report to work.
Not long after, a group of Filipino teachers set up a Pinoy Teachers
blog that described many abuses they suffered at the hands of UPI.
(“Pinoy” is Filipino slang for “Filipino”. The blog features extensive
links to the AFT).
* Nov 11, 2008: 38 teachers have arrived from the Philippines.
School administrators claim the Filipinos are very good performers.
* August[pb1] 3, 2009: Superintendent Vallas announces major
teacher layoffs, just two years after he declared a desperate shortage
of teachers.
* August 17, 2009: New school year starts. By now about 200
teachers with H-1B visas are holding jobs. That's very close to the
number of Americans that were fired. The number becomes even closer
because some of the laid-off teachers were rehired by other schools.
But, sadly, most of those teachers couldn't find jobs in Louisiana
schools and had to leave the state.
* September 30, 2009: A year after the first Filipino H-1B was
hired, the union announces complaints concerning UPI. But not about
the fact that Americans were displaced by Filipinos, but that the
Filipinos were being mistreated.
* October 1, 2009: AFT and LFT file complaints against UPI.
* October 4, 2009: By this time 27,000 teachers in California had
been pink slipped. Apparently, it never occurred to Louisiana school
districts to offer them jobs, or to go to junkets in Los Angeles or
San Francisco.

This is my summary of what happened: School officials took an all-
expenses- paid junket to Manila. They must have had a wonderful time
because they decided to hire young female Filipino teachers. So they
announced there was a shortage of teachers. But in fact they already
had more teachers than they needed because so many were jobless due to
layoffs and the Katrina disaster. That problem was solved by
initiating a large layoff of their American teachers after they hired
the Filipinos.

There is nothing unusual about the strategy used by the school
district. In my study of the ongoing H-1B racket, I’ve seen it many
times.

The script goes like this: First employers decide to replace their
American workers with H-1Bs. So they announce there’s a shortage.
Then, shortly after the first wave of H-1Bs report to work, they start
firing Americans.

You would think that, nearly 20 years of the start of the H-1B
program, newspapers and unions would figure the script out. But they
never do. They are usually dumbfounded when somebody like myself tries
to explain it to them. If any of you find a newspaper article that
actually explains that American teachers were replaced by H-1Bs in
Louisiana please notify me. It would be the first I have ever seen.

Sometimes you can detect it by reading between the lines:

"Recovery District Superintendent Paul Vallas called any implication
that the district favored hiring new, young teachers false, and said
hiring authority lies with principals." (Recovery School District to
lay off dozens of teachers today, by Sarah Carr, New Orleans Times-
Picayune, August 3, 2009)

When politicians say something ain't so, then the first thing you know
is that it is so! Of course the district favored hiring young teachers—
that's why they fired their older Americans and hired young females
from the Philippines.

As I have explained many times, H-1B doesn't cause age discrimination—
but it makes it a lot easier for employers to practice it. H-1B is an
age discrimination enabler because the program provides a huge pool of
fresh, inexpensive and indentured young blood to exploit. From an
employer's point of view the rest of the world has an infinite labor
pool that can be used to churn older, more experienced employees out,
and younger ones in.

To understand how churning works in Louisiana schools, examine this
RSD Rookie table:

(Source: Recovery School District to lay off dozens of teachers today,
by Sara Carr, New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 3, 2009).

This table shows that almost all of the teachers in the Recovery
School District have less that 5 years teaching experience. Comparing
the Rookie Chart with the data from the recovery school district
salary chart reveals some interesting results.

Recovery School District Yearly Salary Chart

Year


Bachelor’s
Degree


Special
Education


PhD

0


$43,294


$45,094


$46,094

1


$43,774


$45,674


$45,694

30


$54,694


$62,494


$64,094

RSD teacher salaries rise slowly with years of experience. For
example, an entry level teacher with a Bachelor’s degree earns $43,294
per year and goes up about $500 a year. Thus it costs the school
district $11,400 less to employ a new teacher instead of a 30 year
veteran. But, by an amazing coincidence, the majority of RSD teachers
are young and therefore tend to earn the lower entry-level salaries.

The situation can be far worse than the RSD salary table suggests. The
2003 NEA report did a good job explaining what would actually happen
at the RSD years later:

“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.”

H-1Bs are regularly paid less than entry level salaries—no matter what
college degree they hold! Thus, in the Recovery School District, H-1Bs
often don’t receive a “new teacher” salary as defined by the wage
tables. The DOL public disclosure website for Labor Condition
Applications shows that most of these Filipino teachers get a salary
of about $36,900. That meets the minimum federal “prevailing salary”
requirement, but it’s not the same as a fair salary—according to the
RSD’s own wage chart, the lowest wage teacher with a Bachelor’s degree
should receive is $43,294.

That $6,394 differential in pay makes it very difficult for Americans
to compete for these jobs. Americans will be required to earn the
salary from the RSD table, and the difference in starting salary will
increase if they have an advanced degree. The H-1B must accept
“prevailing salary”, which in this case is less than what a comparable
American can be paid. H-1B visa holders and Americans are beholden to
two different rule books.

In simple terms, first year teachers get first year salaries and
benefits. So every time the school hires a fresh wave of Filipinos or
new college graduates, they can fire older employees and save lots of
cash. A policy of churning employees is made immensely easier and more
profitable when immigration programs such as H-1B provide an
essentially unlimited pool of young foreign workers.

University of California at Davis’ Professor Norman Matloff explained
in detail in his University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform the
savings that employers such as the RSD can realize by hiring H-1B
teachers. He defines two different kinds of savings that are
applicable – Type 1 when an H-1B is paid a lower salary because the
“prevailing salary” rule allows it, and Type 2 savings which are
attributed more to age discrimination. Both types of savings were
enjoyed by the RSD. [On The Need For Reform Of The H-1B Non-Immigrant
Work Visa InComputer-Related Occupations, Fall 2003, (PDF)]

Politicians and the media never seem to tire of the romantic notion
that unemployed engineers and scientists can go back to school to get
math and science teaching certificates, so that they can fill slots
that are supposedly in short supply. It's a trap even many unemployed
techies fall into—because they don't understand that the age factor
will severely harm their odds of finding a teaching job. Schools will
usually choose a young college graduate with no experience versus an
older professional with a new teaching certificate. And they will
choose an H-1B over an American college graduate. The dynamics of age
discrimination and H-1B are lost on almost every labor expert and
economist in the U.S.

Louisiana isn’t the only state that’s doing this. UPI posted news
videos about their Filipino teachers that have been placed in many
areas of the nation. Go here to watch.

Take Georgia for example. It lists UPI as a registered supplier for
foreign teachers.

The NEA report shows how widespread the H-1B teacher phenomenon is:

There were about 15,000 K-12 teachers working under nonimmigrant visas
in the US during the 2002-2003 school year, 10,000 under the H-1B visa
and 5,000 on the J-1 visa.

Since the NEA report, there have been many stories from schools all
across the U.S. that use H-1B teachers. Many of them, including this
incredible story from New York have already been described on
VDARE.COM

Needless to say, the teacher unions should be commended for filing
these complaints. Unscrupulous employers shouldn’t be allowed to get
away with the kind of exploitation and abuse that UPI is alleged to
have perpetrated on their Filipino workforce. But the union complaints
don’t go far enough. American teachers who lost their jobs to the
Filipinos are still without redress.

Arguably, enforcing regulations will help to insure equity in the
labor force, and reduce the incentive for employers to favor
exploitable foreign workers. But, as explained earlier though, even if
the rules are followed, American teachers will still be at a
competitive disadvantage. Enforcing regulations will not save
significant numbers of American jobs.

During the 20 or so years of the H-1B program, teachers’ unions have
failed to file complaints or lawsuits on behalf of American teachers
who have been displaced by foreign labor. In contrast, there have been
many investigations on behalf of foreign guest workers on that were
initiated by various government agencies, and as a result of lawsuits.
It appears that the priority of the teacher’s unions is to make sure
foreigners don’t get ripped off by their employers even while
Americans are getting ripped off of their jobs.

The trend is getting worse. Be sure to read New Report Shows Schools
Increasingly Hiring Foreign Teachers Over Americans. [FAIR Legislative
Update September 21, 2009]

Why are the unions so eager to help foreign workers who are imported
to work in the U.S., while at the same time they are so averse to
stopping the displacement of American teachers?

My opinion—speaking as one who has been repeatedly rebuffed when
seeking to explore the issue with union officials—is that this is one
of those cases where the teacher unions put their own perceived
interests first.

Union officials don’t want to challenge the liberal consensus that
immigration is a Good Thing. As long as the imported teachers join the
union, they are willing to sacrifice their American members."

http://www.vdare.com/sanchez/091027_...a_teachers.htm