School district must pay millions in back pay to foreign teachers

The Department of Labor says Maryland's Prince George's County school district owes $4.2 million in back wages to 1,000 foreign teachers, many of whom paid hefty recruiting fees in their home countries to be able to travel to the United States and land the jobs. The district also must pay a $1.7 million fine for breaking the law, the Labor Department says.

The law says the school district cannot employ workers with H1-B temporary visas if they pay the foreign teachers less than they do American ones. The recruiting and immigration legal fees paid by the teachers--most of whom are from the Philippines--reduces their total compensation to less than American teachers' and thus breaks the law, the Department found. The county said they won't renew the visas for "non-critical" teachers because of budget cuts this year, according to the Manila Bulletin.

The determination may spook other school districts that hire a large proportion of foreign teachers. Many rural districts, or schools in other areas that have trouble recruiting for whatever reason, rely on workers with H1-B visas for staffing. The Baltimore Sun reports that the city schools' 500 Filipino teachers also paid their own recruiting fees to get their jobs, so the district may become a target. The Department of Labor declined to tell the paper whether it was investigating Baltimore or any other districts, but said it's finished looking into 20 educational institutions for H1-B violations since 2005.

Labor Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander tells The Lookout that the $4.2 million is the biggest back wage determination of those investigations. She says "the rules are clear" about visa compliance, and that Prince George's County school district knew or should have known about a $500 "fraud protection" fee about 700 of the foreign teachers paid. The other fees the district didn't know about, but still must pay for, she said.

Brent Todd, a spokesman for Bertie County Schools in rural North Carolina, tells The Lookout that none of his district's H1-B teachers had filed a complaint about paying recruiting fees at home to get their jobs in the U.S.

"They've been able to really become a good part of our county as far as offering art and music and drama and all sorts of things, cultural-type things to our county," Todd said of the foreign teachers, most of whom are also from the Philippines. "We have not had any issues that I'm aware of with the visas or anything like that. Everything has gone really smoothly for us."

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services statistics, Bertie County's schools had 69 approved H1-B applications in 2009, putting it just under Baltimore's district, which was granted 187 visas. (Los Angeles, Houston, and Prince George's County followed with the third, fourth, and fifth most approved visas for a school district in 2009.)

Todd said it's hard to convince young American teachers to settle down in his rural district of 4,500 students.

(A Prince George County district student in 2007: AP)