Promises Broken, Foreign Teachers Say

Education: they say the L.A. district, which recruited them, reneged on a deal to help them gain permanent U.S. residency

Some foreign teachers, recruited to fill vacant positions in the Los Angeles Unified School District, say they may face deportation because the district has reneged on a commitment to sponsor them for permanent residency in the United States.

But a district official whose department handled the recruitment effort said the teachers never received such a promise. The district helped sponsor a few teachers for permanent residency on a case-by-case basis in the past, but that was one of many services the district recently stopped providing as a result of severe budget cuts.

About 200 of the district’s 26,000 classroom instructors are here under temporary worker visas, according to personnel officials. Most of the teachers were brought to Los Angeles through unique recruitment efforts that, beginning in the 1980s, sent district representatives to Canada, Spain and Mexico in search of instructors to take jobs in such hard-to-fill specialties as special education and bilingual instruction.

Dolores Street Elementary School special education teacher Jan Butz, who was recruited from Canada along with her husband, Craig, three years ago, said recruiters promised the couple they would be sponsored for residency. She added that the district continued to imply its willingness in a meeting for Canadian teachers after they were hired, as well as in a letter detailing the limits of the couple’s temporary status.

“We feel we’re being left in a lurch,” said Butz, whose temporary visa has been extended until May. “We can’t understand why, when (the district) has qualified people who want to stay . . . they can’t spend that little extra time and effort to help us.”

Heather Haddon, a special education teacher and Canadian citizen who came to Los Angeles in August, 1989, said she received a letter last July stating that the district would not be able to sponsor teachers for residency because it no longer had the staff to handle the paperwork.

Now, Haddon said, her fate in the United States is in jeopardy. “They have a commitment to me,” said Haddon, who said she gave up a teaching position in Canada because she thought her move to Los Angeles would be permanent. “As far as I’m concerned, I fulfilled my end of the bargain. I’m calling on them to fulfill their end of the bargain.”

But Kathleen Price, administrative coordinator of personnel for the district, said foreign teachers were told from the beginning that their job status was only temporary.

“There was never a promise,” said Price. “I can understand if you’ve relocated yourself and your goal is to stay, it can be an unsettling situation. But they were never told this was forever. . . . From the beginning they were told they were coming on a temporary work visa.”

Price, whose office has lost 110 positions over the last three years, added that helping teachers acquire permanent residency was just one of several practices that had to be eliminated because the staff is no longer available to process the paperwork and keep abreast of complex immigration laws.

She said that the district’s recruitment efforts abroad have been discontinued because of the budget cuts, and that administrators decided as of last July to no longer seek temporary worker visas for new foreign applicants.

Despite the cutbacks, Price said the district does intend to continue renewing the temporary visas of foreign instructors currently working for the district. “Up until the present, we have applied for renewals for current employees (and) we would like to honor our commitment of continuing their employment up to the maximum period.” The visas are good for up to six years under current immigration law.

Without sponsorship by their employer, the instructors have limited alternatives for gaining permanent residency — among them, sponsorship by a close relative or a spouse who is a U.S. citizen.

Though the foreign teachers make up only a fraction of the district’s teaching force, their presence has helped fill slots in specialty areas that have been difficult to staff. In kindergarten through 12th grade, there are currently about 160 teaching vacancies in special education and bilingual education alone, according to Price.

“It will be a loss for us” if any of the foreign teachers are sent back to their countries, said Victor Signorelli, administrator of the district’s special education division. “We did go out and recruit these people . . . and those who I’ve met and observed are outstanding teachers.”

School board member Leticia Quezada said she is particularly concerned about the effect on students in need of bilingual instruction. “Unfortunately we are not able to find the number of bilingual teachers this district needs locally,” said Quezada. “The only people losing out are those children who come into our system and, through no fault of their own, are not able to speak, or read and write English. They are the real victims.”

Catherine Carey, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles teachers union, said she hopes the district can find a way to help the teachers gain permanent residency. “It’s taken a lot of money to recruit these people. They’re fully qualified and have given years of service to (the district) and the children. . . . In the long run, it will cost less than to have to go out and (recruit replacements) all over again,” she said.

Meanwhile, Haddon is looking for a job in other school districts that might be willing to sponsor her. Jan Butz said she and her husband took a trip home to Canada over the holidays to look for teaching jobs.

Butz said she and her husband have few alternatives for gaining permanent residency without sponsorship by the district because they have no relatives to sponsor them and have found smaller school districts to be unfamiliar with the immigration process.

“If we have to leave, we have to leave,” said Butz. But, she added, “They made such efforts to get us here, we’re disgusted at how we’ve been treated in the end.”



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