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EDUCATION-US: Teachers Who Aided in Crisis Face Visa Problems

Jade Sanchez-Ventura

NEW YORK, Jun 25 2004 (IPS) - Hundreds of Caribbean teachers who helped to alleviate a severe teacher shortage in New York City’s public schools three years ago may be sent packing by the end of July, victims of snags in the visa renewal process.

Some 208 teachers, most of them Jamaican and Guyanese, are facing a Jul. 30 deadline, after which they will not be able to work legally. Ninety-eight teachers have not completed the proper visa application process.

"I came here to do a job, I have been doing well at it, and to say leave with little or no notice is really bad. I have no job here or in Jamaica. I guess I will have to leave and try to be recruited again," said one teacher formerly at Kingston College and now at a middle school in the Bronx, speaking to a Caribbean reporter. She described herself as "totally devastated and disappointed at this predicament".

"It is a crisis," said Irwine Claire, managing director of Caribbean Immigrant Services, a community-based group fighting to keep the teachers working in New York. "We are committed to them because they have provided an invaluable service to our community.."

The teachers, from several Caribbean countries including Jamaica, Guyana, and Barbados, were recruited through a massive campaign aimed at easing a shortage of teaching candidates confronting New York City schools. The campaign was called "Join New York’s Brightest. Teach NYC" and was supported by the City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Of 800 new teachers who joined the city schools from foreign countries, 500 were from the Caribbean, 125 from Canada, 60 from Austria, 31 from Italy and 15 from Spain.

Initially, the recruitment sparked criticism in some Caribbean quarters that the best minds of the region were being lured away by better-paying countries in the north as part of a larger exodus of highly-trained skilled professionals including nurses and others.

"The loss of skilled health and education professionals threatens the welfare of the population," wrote Brenda Wyss, an economist with the Center for Popular Economics in Boston, Mass., "as well as the current and future productivity of Jamaica’s work force. Because nurse and teacher training are heavily subsidized by the government, Jamaica loses returns on a valuable investment."

Further, she wrote in an article this year called "Global Poaching", "emigration of mostly female teachers and nurses strains Jamaican household economies as many children are left behind when moms migrate, increasing the ratio of dependents to caregivers.. These social costs seem unlikely to be fully offset by migrant remittances, by the ‘network’ benefits Jamaica reaps from migration, and by skills and capital that returning migrants bring home."

A trained teacher from Guyana gets about 200 dollars per month, while a head teacher of the most highly rated high school earns about 520 dollars, one-sixth of what is on offer in New York.

Other complaints concerning the recruitment centered on the type of visa issued to Caribbean teachers. European and Canadian teachers in New York appear to have enjoyed more favourable terms of employment, including six-year H-1 visas, rather than the two-year J-1 visas granted to Caribbean teachers.

The J-1 visas apply to cultural exchange initiatives, must be renewed annually and last up to three years. Under the J-1 visa, the recipient’s spouse is allowed to work if they receive the proper documentation. As a result, many of the teachers invested considerable money and energy to bring their families to New York with them. Now they are facing the daunting task of relocating again.

Furthermore, the teachers were required under the J-1 visa to continue their education while in New York. At their own expense, many enrolled in master’s programs that they will not be able to complete should they be forced to leave in July.

The H-1B is a nonimmigrant classification used by an alien who will be employed temporarily in a specialty occupation or as a fashion model of distinguished merit and ability.

Former City Councilwoman Una Clarke, who orchestrated the plan to recruit Caribbean teachers, praised the Caribbean professionals, saying that they have been recognised as excellent disciplinarians and have had great success reaching out to parents.

And in a school system that hosts approximately 100,000 Caribbean students they bridge the cultural schism that often gapes between communities and the schools that serve them.

Both the Board of Education and the State Department are responsible for the teachers’ present straits. The teachers were advised one year ago by the New York City Board of Education to apply for the H-1B visa, but that year proved too short a time to successfully complete the application process. The problem was compounded by the State Department’s decision to reduce the number of H-1B visas it grants by two-thirds, cutting the number to 65,000 from 195,000.

The plan to move the teachers to H-1B visas "went up in smoke," said Winston Tucker, a lawyer with Caribbean Immigrant Services.

Discussing the visa snafu in a radio interview, Antoinette Nisbit, a teacher who came from Trinidad to work in New York, said that when the H-1B cap was filled in February many teachers were still waiting for their home governments to issue them a Letter of No-Objection, only the first step in the application process. And, she added, many are still waiting.

Just over 100 teachers have been told that their application will receive the highest priority when the State Department determines the new quota for the H-1B visas next October. But there is no guarantee they will receive them and they are not permitted to work in the meantime.

New York City Assemblyman Nick Perry, who serves a largely Caribbean constituency in the 58th district, added that "many serve in parts of the city where other teachers will not accept teaching positions and these are highly qualified teachers. It would be ghastly to lose them."

Clark noted that while hiring the teachers was an "inspired" idea, they were given little financial or cultural support when they arrived. The Caribbean Immigrant Services has been struggling to provide accommodations and the information they needed to navigate a foreign city. The Board of Education, she charged, did nothing.

The Board of Education’s recommendation to change their visa status was a good one, but according to some affected teachers speaking in a radio interview, a year was far too short a time to successfully complete the application and that the Board did not provide a liaison to navigate the difficult application process.

It appears that the Board of Education is now working to help the teachers.