WASHINGTON D.C. - After taking the cudgels for restive Filipino teachers in Louisiana, the influential American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is training its sights on the plight of foreign mentors in American schools.

“Our experience in this case (Louisiana teachers) was they were afraid to speak out and we only heard about the systemic abuses through AFT’s contacts with Philippine labor unions,” AFT Assistant Legal Director Daniel McNeil told ABS-CBN News.

“We’re working with Congress to strengthen immigration laws to ensure that recruiters are not allowed to operate in the shadows and without responsibility,” he added.

The million-strong AFT has intervened in the case of Filipino teachers in Louisiana.

They accused recruiter Lulu Navarro of Los Angeles-based Universal Placement International (UPI) of collecting an average of $15,000 per teacher for jobs in Baton Rouge, Caddo Parish, and Shreveport public schools.

After the Louisiana teachers union lodged a complaint at the state labor department, the AFT raised the accusations to the federal level.

“What makes these allegations especially heinous is that the victims are good teachers, the school districts and tax dollars are involved, and that all this is taking place in 21st Century America,” AFT president Randi Weingarten said.

The AFT is organizing a first-ever stakeholders’ forum on international teacher recruitment on November 18.

Pinoys center stage

Filipino teachers are expected to take center stage in the forum because of their sheer number and diverse experiences in America.

Another major event, the First National Asian Pacific American Workers Rights hearing is scheduled for Friday under the auspices of the umbrella Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance.

In 2007, there were an estimated 19,000 foreign teachers in the US.

An AFT study revealed that the number of Filipino teachers in Baltimore City public schools increased from 108 in 2005 to over 600 last year (more than 1,200 for the entire Maryland) – representing 10 percent of the city’s teaching force.

“The US Department of Education’s 2007 Teacher Shortage Areas Nationwide Listing report finds that geographic and content specialty shortages currently exist in nearly every state,” the report said.

“Given these realities, international teacher recruitment trends are likely to proceed even in an economic downturn,” the paper concluded.

The research noted that the trend on foreign-trained teachers is so new, data has proven to be scarce.

The AFT, for instance, cannot pinpoint where the guest teachers are, what countries they came from, or how long they stay in the US after their initial visa (i.e., how many eventually acquire permanent residency status).
 
Teaching Educators 
    
The report says “a number of alarming stories emerge” from the diverse experiences of foreign teachers landing jobs in the US.
    
It cites the case of Omni Consortium, Multicultural Professionals and Multicultural Educational Consultants that were indicted in 2004 for conspiracy to commit alien smuggling, visa fraud, mail fraud and money laundering.
    
Together they recruited 273 teachers in the Philippines when it was discovered fewer than a hundred jobs were actually available in Texas.
    
Teachers paid as much as $10,000 each, often through loans offered by the recruiters who charged them interest as high as 60 percent, the report revealed.
    
Three school officials in El Paso were also indicted for accepting all-expenses-paid recruiting trips to the Philippines and China.
    
The problem stems in part, McNeil said, on the need to educate both school administrators and US-bound mentors.
    
“It’s really a matter of education. The school districts were told this was a service that was free. Under federal law it’s not supposed to be free. The employer, in this case, the school districts are required to pay the visa fees and the associated fees that go along with it,” he explained.
    
In the case of Filipino teachers in Louisiana, the US Labor Department can seek reimbursement, on behalf of the victimized mentors, for these fees from the Louisiana public school system.
    
The state, in turn, can recoup those expenses from the recruiter, in this case, Navarro and UPI.
    
“The fees those migrating teachers pay their recruiter fund round-the-world flights for government officials from the wealthiest country on earth,” the AFT report states.

Standards and protocols 
    
“Such arrangements violate many international standards for ethical recruiting,” it stresses.
    
McNeil revealed they are looking at protocols established for foreign nurses in the US. The trend towards sourcing nurses and other healthcare personnel from outside America started much earlier than those of teachers.
    
“AFT is striving to establish the same kind of best practices and protocols for overseas teachers,” he explained.
    
Britain and members of her old territories adopted a Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol in 2004 that governs the recruitment of foreign-trained teachers.
    
It sets the rights and responsibilities of both recruiting and supplying countries.
    
“Recruitment should be free from unfair discrimination and from any dishonest or misleading information, especially in regard to gender exploitation,” the document reads.
    
“It is the responsibility of source countries to manage teacher supply and demand within the country…the source country should include within its terms of service for teachers provisions to their re-integration into the source-country education system on their return from abroad,” the protocol mandates.
    
The AFT believes the need for Filipino and other foreign-trained teachers will persist as demand grows and the supply of American teachers continues to stagnate.
    
They estimate that 200,000 new teachers are needed every year – 70,000 of them in impoverished school districts.