Changes in U.S. visa policy have once again thrown up roadblocks for school districts that rely on international educators to address persistent teacher shortages in subjects like math, science, and foreign languages.
President Donald Trump announced Sept. 19 a new fee of $100,000 to obtain an H1-B visa, one of the primary visas used by international teachers. That’s a dramatic cost increase for the credential, which previously had a $2,000 to $5,000 application fee. The Trump administration also proposed a new H1-B application process that would give preference to workers in jobs with higher salaries.
The new fee has created upheaval for districts in both major cities and in rural areas in states like Alaska, Texas, and North Dakota.
“With a pen stroke, we possibly have ruined the future of education for Alaska students,” Kodiak Island Borough Superintendent Cyndy Mika told Alaska Public Media Monday.
The 2,000-student district, which covers remote villages on a large island, employs 30 international teachers, and many rely on H1-B visas, she said. The strategy has been so successful that Mika organized a recruiting trip to the Philippines with leaders from four other Alaska districts earlier this year, APM reported.
Education organizations and lawmakers from both major parties have raised concerns about how the new fee, which took effect two days after Trump signed his Sept. 19 executive order, will affect teacher staffing.
Trump’s order allows the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security to exempt individual applicants or targeted industries from the new fee if it is “in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.” AASA, the School Superintendents Association, is pressing the administration to include teachers as an exempt profession, Senior Government Affairs Manager Tara Thomas wrote in a Sept. 24 blog post.
The administration has also proposed replacing a current random lottery system for applicants seeking one of the 65,000 H1-B visas issued annually with a weighted process that gives preference to employees in higher-paying jobs. Public comments on that proposal already cite concerns about how it would affect educators. AASA also plans to comment on the proposal calling for support for school districts in the lottery process, Thomas wrote.
“Since teacher pay is relatively low in comparison to other employers who participate in this program, such as tech companies, this could further hurt school districts’ chances in being selected and granted a petition,” she said.
A spokesperson for the State Department did not respond to emailed questions about the visa changes.
Districts hire international teachers to fill staffing gaps
The new visa fee is the latest chapter in an uncertain time for immigration policy that has led some districts to scale back their international recruiting efforts or abandon them entirely.
In May, districts faced another hurdle when the State Department temporarily halted issuing J-1 visas, the other credential used by international teachers. Though the agency has since resumed issuing those visas, the indefinite down time and unclear communication raised anxiety for some district leaders, who’ve mastered the ins and outs of immigration law to keep their classrooms staffed.
J-1 visas—also used by live-in au pairs, international summer camp counselors, and seasonal workers in tourist areas—allow international teachers to participate in a “cultural exchange” by teaching in U.S. schools for up to three years.
By contrast, H1-B visas, which have a more complicated and costly application process, allow highly skilled workers in specialty occupations to work in the U.S. for up to six years, with the possibility for renewal after that. H1-B visas also offer a path to permanent residency, but shorter-term J-1 visas don’t. There are no federal data on how many teachers are employed through either form of visa.
Districts typically jump through hoops to get an H1-B visa for an international teacher if they want them to fill a particularly hard-to-fill position for a longer period of time, George Shipley, superintendent of the Bison, S.D., district, told Education Week in June.
Three of the small, rural district’s 18 teachers are international exchange participants from the Philippines. Two of them rely on J-1 visas, and one, a high school math teacher, is on an H1-B visa, Shipley said.
“If we get someone good and we want to keep them here long term, I could recommend an H1-B,” said Shipley, who added that he “didn’t expect to know this much about the visa process” when he became an educator. The rural superintendent has traded tips with peers on the ins and outs of the visa process.
New visa fee unsustainable for school districts
Even before the recent visa changes, the Milwaukee district decided to suspend a program it once used to hire 200 international teachers, Superintendent Brenda Cassellius told the Milwaukee Press Club Sept. 24.
“We decided a while ago just because of the political climate—with [increased immigration enforcement] and all of that—that it would be challenging ... to get those applications through,” she said. “Now that there is even further policy [change] by the administration, I think that makes it even more challenging.”
School districts around the country have said the most recent visa changes could affect their hiring plans.
Texas school districts and charter schools employ 500 teachers through H1-B visas, the Houston Chronicle reported. One district called the fee change “unsustainable.” North Carolina schools have similar concerns.
“Simply put, most schools could not sustain such costs,” a spokesperson for TMSA Public Charter Schools, which operates across the state, told the Raleigh News and Observer. “Without an exemption, the result could be a severe shortage of qualified teachers at a time when schools nationwide already face staffing challenges.”
The new fees do not apply to applications that were in progress before the changes were announced, the Trump administration said.
Other industry groups, including those representing doctors and hospitals, have petitioned for blanket exemptions.
A bipartisan group of senators have proposed legislation to close loopholes in the H1-B application process, claiming companies abuse the credentials to pay foreign employees lower wages and crowd out available U.S. talent.
While Trump said his order was designed to preserve U.S. competitiveness, some lawmakers in his own party have sounded the alarm at possible effects on schools. Alaska Rep. Nick Begich, a Republican, said in a Sept. 25 interview with public radio station KYUK that he’d raised those concerns with the Trump administration.
“We know that it’s a hard job to fill, and when you’ve got positions that go unfilled, it means that kids are going uneducated,” he said.
