As the debate for comprehensive immigration reform gains momentum and some kind of legislative response seems imminent, the plight of teachers recruited from the Caribbean during 2001-2006 is driving to the fore.
As the debate for comprehensive immigration reform gains momentum and some kind of legislative response seems imminent, the plight of teachers recruited from the Caribbean during 2001-2006 is driving to the fore. At the rally held at Capitol Hill on Wednesday, 20th March to highlight the Caribbean-African position on prospective amendments, representatives of the more than 1000 Caribbean teachers and their children aired grievances. Later, contingents delivered two documents to Senators, inclusive of Eric Cantor (Republican) and Kirsten Gillivrand (Democrat), amounting to 57 pages of documented discontent, explanations and suggestions titled “ Broken Promises: the story of Caribbean International Teachers in New York City’s Public Schools” and “ Dream Deferred: Black, Invisible & Documented: The Plight of Caribbean Immigrant Youth”.
According to Judith De Four-Howard, a recruit from Trinidad and Tobago and representative of the Coalition for Educational Justice, Caribbean teachers “came from very comfortable situations” to one where they cannot realize “ even their level of creativity, not even their level of productivity, not even occupational mobility”. Besides, “they have lost freedom, social standing, become financially unstable and financially disadvantaged”. This is so she said, for the teachers are wrongly classified as unskilled labour (EB3) under the immigration law rather than as professionals (EB2) and there are no means of redress. The transition from Caribbean recruited teachers to permanent American residents and citizens is therefore stymied in a complex bureaucratic process, incurring “prohibitive legal fees…and constant threat of termination and deportation,” as happened in 2004 when 200 teachers received letters of termination from the Department of Education on expiration of visas. It took the intervention of Congressman Major Owen to avert the situation.
According to the “Broken Promises”, one document of the grievances authored by the Association of International Educators and The Black Institute, at the time of recruitment the teachers were promised “New York State certification, Master’s degrees, housing assistance and ultimately, a pathway to permanent United States residency for themselves and their nuclear families”. These promises were never met by the New York City Department of Education it states, although the teachers remained in the school system “teaching in areas where there are teacher shortages – often in low-income, low-performing schools.” The promises, said De Four-Howard, made Caribbean teachers took calculated risks to uproot themselves from the Caribbean but the hardships are unacceptable.
The dilemma of the teachers inevitably extends to their children. The other document, “Dream Deferred”, noted that “many of their children have ‘aged-out’ of their legal immigration status as they are no longer dependents under their parents’ visas…because the parents did not receive green cards by the time the youth reached age 21 they’ve lost their status”. And since most of the children arrived in the US after age 16 they cannot qualify for the Presidents’ Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme (DACA).
So the children cannot legally work, are barred from obtaining driver’s licenses or state identification, have to qualify as F-1 international students to continue their post-secondary education, prohibited from accessing scholarships, grants and any form of public assistance, disqualified from their parent’s health insurance but cannot have their own, and are subjected to “stop-and-frisk” and deportation.
While an F-1 visa legalizes the students’ status the cost of attending college doubles as they are required to “pay out-of-state tuition rates”. These additional costs are also burdensome to the families. Alternatively, the students could remain with their expired H-4 visas, pay in-state tuition rates but risk deportation. One condition of the F-1 visas is that its holder must return to his country of origin. To become a permanent resident therefore, depends on whether an employer is willing to sponsor him, a family member preferably a parent would petition on his behalf, or he gets married to an American citizen. Any of these options incurs extensive waiting time.
By Lin-Jay Harry-Voglezon (American International News Correspondent)
