Filipino teachers in Maryland caught in middle of labor dispute

By Robert Samuels, Published: May 6
Charisse Cabrera sat in the back pew of Holy Family Catholic Church in Mitchellville one spring Sunday as a priest tried to comfort a congregation of Filipino teachers caught in a bureaucratic maze.

The Prince George’s County school system has brought them in by the hundreds in the past decade to comply with one federal law. Now they are at risk of being sent home because the school system failed to comply with another.

The result could mean as many as 957 foreign teachers — more than 10 percent of the county’s teaching corps — would lose their visas by 2014. Such an exodus would mark a significant reversal after years in which many U.S. schools filled hard-to-staff positions with overseas instructors.

Cabrera, who teaches pre-kindergarten at Carole Highlands Elementary School in the Takoma Park area, would be among the first to go; her visa expires in June. She nodded as the priest suggested a divine reason for all of this.

“Sometimes when we’re faced with a difficult situation, we ask, ‘Why are we suffering? Why are they taking our visas away?’ ” the priest said, answering: The Lord “wants you to find that inner spirit — that strength deep down inside of you to help yourself, and to help others.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/caught-in-the-middle-foreign-teachers-in-pr-georges-fight-to-stay-in-america/2011/04/14/AF9OPZ9F_story.html

First they bring in foreigners to take these jobs for crap pay, then they shortchange even that.

Some of them didn't even speak English.

according to the article:

"Such an exodus would mark a significant reversal after years in which many U.S. schools filled hard-to-staff positions with overseas instructors.

Cabrera, who teaches pre-kindergarten at Carole Highlands Elementary School in the Takoma Park"

or do we have another situation where you can't find citizens who will do the work that immigrants do for the wages that are being offered?

Yeah, that's what we need: Keep bashing teachers and reducing their compensation, that's the "free market" at work--everybody works for free.

I'm sure many of them would move next door to Maryland!