School districts are increasingly turning to importing teachers from foreign nations to work for lower pay than American teachers, but the Trump administration is making visas harder to get and that is threatening a hiring practice that undermines professional teachers in America.
In one tale about a foreign teacher from the Philippines hired by a rural school district in North Carolina, for instance, it noted that the district was hiring some 3,600 foreign teachers because American teachers feel underpaid.
“In Halifax, international teachers are now the majority of educators in the district—109 out of 156 teachers across 11 schools. A total of 75 have H-1B status, while the rest are here on J-1 visas,” the site Border Belt Independent reported.
The foreign teacher highlighted in the story even excuses his being hired by the Columbus County school system.
“A lot of local American teachers are leaving schools because they don’t feel like they earn enough,” he exclaimed. “We’re helping to fill the gaps. We’re not taking jobs from locals.”
But in reality, he is taking jobs away from Americans because the school systems are underpaying foreign workers so they don’t have to hire Americans at higher wages.
In an appearance in Irving, Texas, this month, Dallas Express reporter Kellen Jones pointed out how importing workers hurts American workers.
“When people hear ‘H-1B,’ they tend to think it’s a distant Washington issue,” Jones said ahead of his appearance. “In reality, it affects who gets hired, who gets laid off, what wages look like, and how local tax dollars are spent in places like Irving”
“This isn’t just about immigration policy in the abstract,” Jones added. “It’s about whether communities are subsidizing labor decisions that displace local workers or suppress wages, and whether taxpayers are getting an honest accounting of where their money is going. The program has legitimate tradeoffs, and we should be truthful about what those are.”
At the event, Jones noted that schools are a key actor in the problems facing American workers.
Jones explained that, “Arguably the biggest subsidy that comes from taxpayers is in the form of education. There is no greater and more direct transfer of wealth from the tax payer than to the H-1B worker at every level of government than this.”
“I’ll use the Dallas ISD [school system] as an example,” he continued. “Dallas ISD hired about 1,200 H-1B workers over the last five years. Many of these jobs are in bilingual education. In other words, legal aliens are having to be brought into Dallas to teach the children of illegal aliens who don’t speak English.”
But even if the need for more teachers was sharp, American schools have also opted to hire thousands more administrations instead of increasing the pay of teachers.
According to Education Week, in 2022 alone the number of employees listed as members of administration increased 37 percent, even as enrollment went up only slightly to that time.
Another report from 2024 claimed spending on school administrators increased 54 percent across the state of Washington, while spending costs for teachers only rose 25 percent. And non-teacher staff spending rose 66 percent.
In yet another report it was revealed that between 2000 and 2019 the number of administrators in U.S. public schools grew 87.6 percent, but teaching positions only grew at 8.7 percent with student enrollment growth at an even smaller 7.6 percent.
The solution, here, might seem obvious. Stop hiring do-nothing administrators and pay teachers more so that more Americans want to take those jobs. Then stop importing foreigners at low wages altogether.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: Facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston, or at X/Twitter @WTHuston
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