Executive Director made teachers pay for their visas, attorney fees.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: A school district in northern Texas has come under federal scrutiny for allegedly misusing the H-1B visa program to illegally hire teachers are various schools throughout the district.
The Garland Independent School District, located in a suburb of Dallas, is at the center of the legal firestorm – specifically, its former Executive Director of Human Resources, Victor Leos.
According to the Rowlett-Lakeshore Times, Leos was at the top of an elaborate scheme that saw him using the school’s district very real need for bilingual teachers as a way to make some extra cash for himself and his family.
Leos would reportedly travel to foreign countries, mostly South America, to find individuals qualified enough to teach in the district’s highly bilingual schools. Leos would then make these people pay for their own recruiting and attorney fees to file the H-1B application, something that employers are supposed to do when they petition for a foreign national to be given an H-1B visa.
Each of these new recruits was made to use the services of Yu, South & Associates, an immigration firm based in Richardson, Texas. This firm employs a woman named Amy Ruediger as a Paralegal Assistant – Ruediger is apparently the daughter of Leos. On top of that, once the teachers came to the US, they were told to live in a specific apartment complex that happened to be owned by Leos’ stepson.
A report by The Wall Street Journal seems to back this up, saying that teachers were hired through a recruiting firm based in the Philippines, where Spanish is not spoken in any great amount, and that prospective new employees had to pay Leos $1,000 for an interview, and an additional $5,000 if they were eventually hired.
Now, the fate of these teachers hangs in the balance, with the US government having to decide what to do with them (neither has yet commented publicly). By all indications, these teachers were victims, and did not knowingly break US immigration laws to come here, but now any chance they have at permanent residency, or green cards, may now have gone out the window.
The Garland Independent School District is not the only one allegedly exploiting the H-1B, high-skilled worker program.
The US Department of Labor has found over 2,000 cases of H-1B fraud related to schools, school districts, or school boards since 2001. Of that number, exactly 642 are from Garland specifically. In Prince George’s County, a southern Maryland county just outside of Washington, DC, the school district was forced to pay $4.2 million in restitution three years ago for similar fraud related to 1,000 of its teachers.
“I am deeply, deeply disheartened to watch what has happened to our school district,” said Garland School Board President Larry Glick, in a statement earlier this month. “Our reputation for excellence and educating a diverse population, while maintaining fiscal responsibility has been tarnished.”
The investigation into these claims continues, orchestrated by the US Departments of Labor, Education and Homeland Security.