H-1B Visa Program for Teachers in Texas Creates Problems



Garland Texas began a program several years ago of hiring teachers on H-1B visas and now has a problem on its hands according to the Dallas News.

Apparently the school system told the Spanish-speaking teachers that they would be able to stay permanently in the United States because the school system would sponsor them for green cards. What the authorities ignored was that immigrant visas are different from guest worker visas in that the employer has to make a good faith effort to hire qualified Americans and permanent residents for the job before they can make the claim that there is a shortage that requires the permanent job for the foreign worker.

Now the school district is in a major public relations mess as several of the long-term foreign teachers are facing the prospect of losing their jobs and the ability to stay in the United States. Included in the news account is the lament of one of the foreign teachers, “I have been here for 10 years. My daughter was born here. She doesn’t know any other country other than the United States.” What is odd about that statement is the fact that the H-1B visa is valid for only three years and may be renewed only once for an additional three years.

This public relations mess would have been avoided if the H-1B program had the same requirement as the immigrant visa program that the visas could be issued only if U.S. workers were unavailable. But, if that were the case, the H-1B visa program would be superfluous, and many of today’s unemployed professionals would likely have jobs.

About Author

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Jack, who joined FAIR’s National Board of Advisors in 2017, is a retired U.S. diplomat with consular experience. He has testified before the U.S. Congress, U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform and has authored studies of immigration issues. His national and international print, TV, and talk radio experience is extensive (including in Spanish).

21 Comments

  1. avatar

    The teachers should have been given correct information from the get go. That’s why it’s so important to always speak with an experienced immigration attorney when dealing with any immigration related issue.

  2. avatar

    o-k. folks here´s a conundrum. If there is a shortage of teachers in the u.s, it is because they won´t hire you if you are not black, jewish, female, democrat or at least have an – ez in your surname. take any teacher resume with a few years of real life experience to asia or any nation in the americas and watch how quickly they will get you a visa and hire you quickly if you have a good attitude.perhaps not for any more than $2000 per month. but trust me those teachers they bring in don´t give a dxxn any more than americans do and all they will do is send that taxpayer salary money home-

  3. avatar
    NO AMNESTY; NO H1BS on

    Thank you Garland, TX government schools for your support of the American worker. You should look bad because you are. Axe the idiot who decided to hire the H1bs in the first place.

  4. avatar

    Many years ago, I taught elementary school in a district not far removed from the Garland ISD. Those were the days when this country was sane. I would not like to be in the classroom today. What a pity. I really enjoyed teaching, but from what I hear, real teaching is impossible in today’s climate.

    • avatar

      Those foreign teachers are here illegally if they have been in US more than six years or did not reapply for a green card after three years like the sign states.

  5. avatar

    Thank you for covering this issue. Here’s the comment that I attempted to post to the DallasNews dot com website. Curiously, the posting did not appear…
    The controversial H-1B Visa program was initially based on an obscure subsection of the 1952 Walters-McCurran Act. Among other provisions, it permitted the importation of 500 low-skilled “Basque Sheepherders” annually. A corrupt US Representative named Joshua Eilberg created the “Eilberg Amendment” in 1976 in response to AAU lobbying. The law was changed to allow colleges, universities, and nonprofits to import unlimited numbers of college professors and researchers. Finally, in 1990, citing the Eilberg Amendment as precedent, this program was extended to the private sector, except an annual cap between roughly 115,000 to 230,000 per year was imposed.

    Free-market advocate and Nobel economist Milton Friedman was quoted in 2002 as he identified the H-1B Visa program as a “government subsidy” program as it allowed employers to import higher-skilled workers for below-market wages. Kamal Nath, the Commerce Minister of India called H-1B the “outsourcing visa” in a 04 15 07 New York Times article.

    Economic elites advocate for the H-1B Visa program. This corrupt program pits the world’s poor against the American middle class, and the latter are losing. This program is bloated. Based on the number of total admissions since 1975, at least 3 million Americans have been permanently displaced from their careers by H-1B Visa holders. Most Americans held positions in STEM fields. A number, including myself, have natural science Ph.D.s. You may learn more about this program by searching by title for the PDF version of the 2012 article, “How Record Immigration Levels Robbed American High-Tech Workers of $10 Trillion.”

    • avatar
      NO AMNESTY; NO H1BS on

      This just shows governments, like the corporations, play the H1B game. Directly like the Garland govt schools, or indirectly by giving IT contracts to these so-called minority business Indian contractors.

  6. avatar

    Meet the Press moderator David Gregory is one of those ‘in the tank’ Obama televsion journalists with no interest in independently investigating preposterous claims made by this administration. The truth is Gregory is a D.C. insider in tune with the radical fundamental transformation our nation is now undergoing. Don’t bring up embarrassing facts, please! Leland has it right that David Gregory is a parrot for the administration’s preposterous contention it has deported a record number of unauthorized aliens. How hard is it to find out the truth? The fact is the Obama administration is including for the first time in history those turned back at the border in their “record” deportation numbers? How could it be that only Leland, myself, and those who read this website know these deportation figures are totally crooked? As pointed out by Leland, Obama himself said the numbers were “a little deceptive” . How about incredibly deceptive?

    • avatar

      While it is true that the Dems want to import every illegal they can (because they hope to build a whole new voting base to keep them in power) it is the Republicans who typically support these visa programs (In the Senate they asked for a 500% increase in foreign worker visas) in order to please their corporate masters.

      • avatar

        I agree the federal government always does what their corporate masters want! Hence the big push for illegal alien amnesty. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce (the lobby of the corporate masters) is lobbying congress because the masters want cheaper labor. They don’t care if it undermines legal Americans as long as THEIR profits go up!

      • avatar

        There are definitely some Demos, like Cong. Guttierez in Ill., who are more interested in representing the illegals in his district, than the Americans. Republicans favor driving down wages and trying to break unions, to payoff their large donors. GOP Congressmen don’t just bring in illegals, they make certain there pay is low.

  7. avatar

    Fess Up You NWO Open Border Pundits Working Public School District Managment

    Your chronic lying can eventially get you fired or worse yet, felony prosecution…..it really hasn’t happenned yet…..but laid off and unemployed legal American teachers can likely be your worse nightmare, as overpopulation HORRIFYINGLY worsens things more and more as time goes on.

    Hungry dogs bark.

  8. avatar

    “What is odd about that statement is the fact that the H-1B visa is valid for only three years and may be renewed only once for an additional three years.”
    It isn’t so odd when you think about the ways people game the system. You are assuming the teacher came in on an H-1B visa. My guess is it went something like this:
    Student Visa, OPT, H-1B 1st term, H-1B 2nd term.
    That could easily keep a foreigner here for 10 years.

  9. avatar

    David Gregory was going along with the “record” deportation nonsense on Meet The Press yesterday. For the record, here were only 133,000 removals from the interior of the US last year. The rest are the never before counted border turnarounds. ICE figures show arrests are down 40% in the interior since 2009.

    Why this issue is important is because every time someone says this administration has reduced enforcement, the answer is that they have deported a record 2 million people. In fact, Chuck Schumer gave this exact argument a couple weeks ago on MTP. It’s false and just an attempt to make it look like the law is being enforced. It’s not. The president himself called those numbers “a little deceptive”. Why then does the press repeat what is provably wrong?

    • avatar

      Yeah Leland I also read that most of the Welfare are by us, WHITES then blacks and last hispanics…..legal ones how you swing it?

      • avatar

        Hey John

        Why do you compare legal apples to illegal oranges? No comparison in my book…..even America’s legal poor on social services likely have legal citizen family that paid federal/state taxes for decades, especially entitlements like Social Security and even Medicaid/Medicare. These foreigners that sneak in to America have family they want chain migrated into America with no past support of our government over the decades….nada.

      • avatar

        More of your nonsense. There are five times as many whites as any other ethnic group, so naturally more whites will be on welfare as a total number. But if you take the average black, hispanic, or white, the first two are more likely to be on welfare. If whites were on welfare at the same percentages as those other two groups, you would have a point. You don’t, you never do.

      • avatar
        Frank Mitchell on

        John Skierd: You either do not understand statistics OR you are trying to delude other people with your comment.
        Here are the FACTS:
        Hispanics (mainly new legal immigrants and illegal aliens) are second in welfare usage after blacks and nearly twice the rate of whites.
        Whites are 63.7% of the population (196.8 million) and Hispanics are 16.3% of the US population (50.5 million), blacks are around 13% of the population. So according to the welfare numbers: Whites at 39% of welfare are highly UNDERREPRESENTED and Hispanics at 16% are at average for the US, blacks at 39.8% of welfare recipients are highly overrepresented.
        Nice try. Next time check your math.
        http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-04.pdf Table 1 (Hispanic)
        http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-05.pdf Table 1 (White, non Latino)
        http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-06.pdf Table 1 (Black),