Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 23:50:36 -0800 From: Norm Matloff Subject: the latest H-1B cause celebre To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter The San Francisco Chronicle article in http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/19/MNV91M1B0N.DTL&tsp=1 reports that a San Francisco school teacher, a Cantonese-speaking speech specialist, is "facing deportation" because her H-1B visa is expiring and the school district cannot justify sponsoring her for a green card, given that there are qualified U.S. applicants for the job. Putting aside the point that this person will not be "deported"--her visa will end, and she and her family will simply move back to Canada, as opposed to being frog-marched over the border-- give me a break! No Cantonese-speaking teachers in the Bay Area? 有冇搞錯! (Cantonese equiv. of "Are you kidding me?") Granted, this was a specialty teaching position, but even if the position itself is justified (I have my doubts of that, more on this below), the notion that there are no qualified and willing U.S. citizen or permanent resident candidates available is just absurd. What immediately came to mind was the case a couple of years ago of the Dallas Morning News, a major newspaper, sponsoring for a green card a foreign worker to fill a position as a "bilingual [English, Spanish] sports photographer." The bilingual requirement is questionable, and very possibly a pretext, but even if it was genuine, give me a break! This is DALLAS, not Des Moines. There ought to be some Spanish-speaking sports photographers around. There was a teacher case similar to the one above last year in Oakland, http://oaklandnorth.net/2010/10/14/oakland-tech-students-and-staff-plea-to-keep-teachers/ If I recall correctly, the district did hire an American (who also happened to be of Filipino descent like the "deported" teacher, actually a friend of the latter). In the San Francisco Chronicle article above (with, by the way, 284 reader comments as I write this), city councilman David Chiu called the teacher a victim of the country's broken immigration policies. And the people interviewed in the Chinese-language coverage of the story on the region's main Chinese TV station, at http://www.ktsf.com/community-leaders-call-for-immigrant-teacher-to-stay/ made it sound like the problem is USCIS' confusing bureaucracy. But there is nothing broken or bureaucratic about it. The law says that this teacher can't be hired if a willing and qualified American can be found to fill the job. The district says they indeed have qualified applicants. I discussed this case today with Prof. Ling-chi Wang, a close friend of mine. Ling-chi, retired from UC Berkeley, is arguably the dean of the Asian-American Studies community nationwide. (He is actually the one credited with coining the term "Asian-American.") He has been looking into helping the teacher, and kindly agreed to allow me to quote his comments in this posting: I feel very badly for Yuen-Ming Sin. This personal catastrophe could have been avoided, if the school district has been more competent and conscientious in handling the case and the needs of the students. The school administrators knew about the looming immigration problems more than a year ago and they had to opportunity to do it right. Now it is approaching a tragic end for the teacher and the students. I know when the administrators realized what was about to happen, they quickly tried to find a replacement. What they did find was a person who is still in training and still unlicensed, as far as I know. If there are other better qualified teachers, the district did not bother to look for him or her. How else can we explain the situation now? You may quote me. Ling-chi I have enormous respect for Ling-chi, and of course appreciate his concern for Ms. Sin Ling-chi's passion for helping the underdog is unmatched. But the bottom line remains that this job could be filled by a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, in fact probably one who is even more qualified than Ms. Sin. Keep in mind that this job pays $113,000 per year! (I saw one report that said $137,700.) Not only are there large numbers of Cantonese speakers in the Bay Area, there are many, many more all over the country. No speech therapists among them who'd be interested in a $100K+ job? Come on. There is of course also the issue of just what it is Ms. Sin is doing. Nothing I've read in the newspapers or gotten from the Chinese TV news indicates that Ms. Sin is really doing speech therapy. From my experience as an ESL teacher in Chinatown (long ago), and reading the reports and the reader comments (some from parents who've had contact with Ms. Sin), it appears that she is simply evaluating English ability for placement of immigrant kids, and teaching an ESL course and advising the kids' parents. Thus there are, I believe, likely issues of the district overdefining the job, not to mention wasting their precarious budget. But in any case, the central fact is that the district simply didn't try very hard to find someone. For them H-1B/green card was the first resort, not the last resort. In this case, it wasn't our immigration system that was broken, but rather then employer's abuse of it. Norm