Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, is portrayed in a recent Education Next puff piece as a modern day Braveheart in high heels because of the way she ruthlessly chops the jobs of union teachers.

Most of her layoff victims are older teachers. Suspiciously, the race or ethnicity of the teachers who lost their jobs is not yet available. The rumor mill has it that most of the teachers who were cut were black women over the age of 40. The racial mix can be seen in these two youtube videos of a protest march (here and here and here). In addition to lots of people with gray hair there are a few black and white males, perhaps a Hispanic or two — BUT NO ASIANS!

DC schools are following the same pattern I have observed in many states, Louisiana being the most recent example:

1. First, a shortage of teachers is declared. Rhee was hired by DCPS to solve the shortage. But many feel that chancellor Michele Rhee caused the shortage by firing teachers because it served the purpose of her former organization (Teach for America) which was supposedly going to solve a shortage problem that didn’t exist.
2. Then layoffs of a few hundred older teachers takes place. It’s a shell game designed to replace older teachers with younger teachers and American teachers with younger H-1Bs.
3. Foreign teachers on H-1B visas are hired once most of the Americans have been let go. It’s a sure bet that Rhee, who was born in the USA to South Korean immigrants, will be hiring mostly Asians.Labor Condition Applications can be viewed by going to the DOL FLC data center. It reveals that Rhee wants H-1Bs for jobs that could obviously be filled by Americans:

District of Columbia Public Schools  SECONDARY TEACHER  $73,844/yr

District of Columbia Public Schools  ESL TEACHER $44,988/yr

Rhee claims that the Oct. 2 layoffs of 266 teachers and educators were needed to help pay for $43.9 million budget deficit for 2010. Union leaders have denounced the action as an illegal mass firing designed to purge older educators. The two sides have taken the dispute to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (WASHINGTON TEACHERS’ UNION, LOCAL # 6, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, AFL-CIO).

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Last month Rob Sanchez reported on the scandalous practice, recently exemplified in Louisiana, of local school districts firing older and therefore more expensive American teachers and replacing them with younger immigrants brought in via the H-1B conduit.

He particularly excoriated the supine attitude of the Teacher Unions, perfectly happy to let their members suffer, provided the immigrants obediently join up. This politically correct and ruthlessly predatory attitude on the part of the Union leaderships is no surprise to anyone who has read Peter Brimelow’s book on the subject.

Now an even more classic case has surfaced in Washington DC

Barbara Hollingsworth: Importing teachers in the District of Columbia Washingtonexaminer.com November 10, 2009

District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is in hot water for firing 266 teachers and administrators Oct. 2, just weeks into the new school year and only a few months after inexplicably hiring hundreds of new teachers. But there may have been a method to her apparent madness.

According to the federal government’s Foreign Labor Certification Data Center, D.C. Public Schools submitted 46 labor condition applications in 2007 and 2008, giving Rhee authority to import hundreds of foreign teachers on H1B visas without having to make any attempt to find eligible Americans.

Hollingsworth, who quotes from Sanchez’ VDARE.com article without acknowledging us (life’s like that at the top of the food chain) puts the matter well:

Since visa holders can easily be coerced into joining the union and forced to do whatever the union bosses demand, union officials didn’t bother to protect the 20,000 or so American educators who lost their teaching jobs to foreign competitors — many of whom they were forced to train.

However, her solution

What urban school districts really need are right-to-work laws that empower school administrators to hire professional Americans with college degrees in needed core subject areas who are willing to give teaching a chance…

misses the point. So long as unscrupulous employers can use H-1B to drive down entry level salaries, that is what they will do.

The DC case is classic, though, in another sense. Michelle Rhee, the DC Schools Chancellor, is of course Korean – the daughter of immigrants. It is a safe bet that if “hundreds of foreign teachers” are indeed imported most will be Asian – that has been the norm so far.

So, like the DC Technology Office scandal, this is another case of enterprising Asians looking after their communities at the expense of Washington’s blacks – whose political leaders are too dim or too feckless to protect them

The Caddo Parish school district in Louisiana didn’t read the fine print when they hired H-1B teachers from the Philippines — and that big mistake that will cost them some big money.

Based on my latest research for VDARE.com the Recovery School District saves about $6,300 a year by hiring the Filipinos over American teachers. The cost per “unit of labor” sounded like a good deal for Caddo but what they didn’t realize is that there were hidden costs, like for instance, Caddo charged each Filipino teacher $1,660 for their visa (some stories say that the bodyshop, Universal Placement International, charged the Filipinos). H-1B regulations require the employer to pay the visa fees, not the foreign worker. So, now that Caddo is in trouble with the feds, they are going to have to pay the teachers back. That still gives the Filipinos a per unit $4,640 price advantage over American teachers — which is quite a cost savings considering they hired at least 43 H-1Bs.

What the school board of Caddo Parish didn’t understand is that cheap labor can get very expensive when the hidden costs are factored in to the equation.

Icess Fernandez at the Shreveport Times published a new article that sheds some light on those hidden costs. The Big Kahuna is a $400,000 reimbursement fund that the immigration attorney on Caddo’s payroll advised them to set up so that Caddo can pay claims that are won by the Pinoy teachers.
To see the immigration attorney’s website click this link, and for more on the firm Fernandez wrote an Oct 12 article.

Make no mistake about it, that $400,000 fund is to be used to pay retribution for the money that RSD and the Caddo Parish ripped off from the Filipino teachers. Perhaps the payments will save the RSD and the bodyshop Universal Placement International (UPI) from having to endure costly lawsuits if the the Filipino teachers who have solid cases are willing to settle out of court.

Federal investigations will probably not be deterred, and any violations of immigration laws may be prosecuted. Ironically though, the potential civil penalties brought about by the Filipinos are more worrisome for Caddo and the UPI than anything the feds might do, because most of the regulations are so full of loopholes that defense lawyers will be able to get most charges reduced to mere pittances.

The $400,000 throws a new twist into the calculations used to compare the cost of American teachers versus the Pinoys. Most likely the entire sum won’t have to be paid out, but using that sum and dividing it by the 43 Filipino teachers in the district would mean that each one of those H-1Bs would cost another $9,300. Subtracting that number from the price advantage per American would mean that each Pinoy teacher would cost $4,640 more than his or her American competitor.

Coming out $4,640 in the hole just for hiring Filipino teachers sounds bad for the Caddo Parish, but the situation isn’t as bad as it sounds because it’s just a one time expense. Forty three H-1B teachers saves the district almost $200,000 per year (benefits not included), so assuming the teachers stay there for a three year visa the district still comes out ahead. There is no reason the teachers will leave after three years, and there is also good reason to believe they won’t get pay raises like most teachers do.

There is at least anecdotal evidence that, absent a collective bargaining agreement or law or policy, some school districts pay their nonimmigrant employees as new teachers, regardless of their experience and qualifications.
– Randy Barber, NEA, 2003

Caddo Parish and the Recovery School District still come out ahead although they will get some bad publicity from the entire episode. That’s assuming the feds don’t come down to heavy on them — sometimes employers are barred from hiring H-1Bs for a year or two, which is the ultimate punishment for employers who get too greedy.

Unmentioned in any of the articles are the other set of victims — the American teachers who were not hired because they were considered too expensive and/or too old. Jobless RSD teachers won’t get their jobs back and unless they file a risky class action lawsuit to complain about their replacement by H-1Bs they won’t get monetary compensation. It’s an all around screw job for Americans.

The Caddo story could become just another example why it’s not going to help American workers if H-1B laws are enforced better — the rules of the game are still not fair.

Rob Sanchez’ excellent blog Rep. Giffords’ Bill To Triple H-1B Visa Cap theorizes that Giffords (D-AZ8th) has come under the influence of Indian contributors.

If so, she has company. Political contributions by Indians, overwhelmingly to Democrats, are becoming significant. Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon Fund chief indicted for insider trading last week, gave the Obama Victory Fund $30,800 last year.

But why is Giffords getting involved? She won Arizona’s 8th district in 2006 from the GOP by pretending to be sensible on Immigration, while the Bush hacks in Washington sabotaged the campaign of the Republican candidate - who really was sound on the issue.

Subsequently she has mainly laid low on the matter while establishing her Treason Lobby credentials by grading C- in the Numbers USA evaluation system.

No doubt she feels she can safely launch this attack on middle-class Americans, because, as Sanchez pointed out, Arizona is not a high tech state. The immigration problem there is inundation by low-skilled Hispanics.

But why take the lead, when the High-tech cheap labor hogs have dozens of other Congressthings in their pocket?

My guess is because of who she is. This is a case of hearing Ancestral Voices. To appease those shades, Americans in general have to suffer.

I will be on the Chuck Wilder talk-radio show on Friday October 16th 1:34 PM PST, 4:34 PM EST. I will be on until the top of the hour.

Wilder’s show is available online in streaming audio which can be listened to at this website:

http://www.crntalk.com

There is a toll free call-in telephone number if you want to chat with us: 1-800-336-2225

This is the show schedule:

• CRN1 12-2pm PT (live)
• CRN6 8-10pm PT (replay)

To listen to the show, click the box where it says “now playing, listen live” “CRN1″.

One of the issues that I may discuss: The Louisiana Federation of Teachers is leading the fight to end the exploitation of H-1B teachers in New Orleans. Representing the Filipino H-1Bs is a noble cause for social justice, but has this teacher’s union done anything to stop schools from hiring H-1Bs when qualified Americans are available for these teaching jobs? It seems to reason that at least some of the 27,000 teachers that have lost their jobs in California could be transferred to work in New Orleans, so why hasn’t the union led a fight on behalf of these unemployed American teachers? Why are school officials going on junkets to Manila to recruit teachers when they could go to Los Angeles or San Francisco instead?

Thursday, October 15, 2009 Fri Oct 16, 2009

Rob Sanchez Job Destruction News letter and writer for CAPS “Up to 200 Thousand Expired Visa Holders missing and A new H-1B scandal in Louisiana is making the news — this time it involves H-1B teachers.

If you’re writing a news story about thousands of laid-off educators—27,000 in California alone—what do you then abruptly begin talking about in the same article? Why, the need for spending millions of tax dollars, in order to encourage people to go into teaching, natch.

(Hey, the millions in graft are the idea of the Nobel Prize-winning John Doe calling himself “Barack Obama,” so it’s got to be brilliant! And for those of you who demur, what are you, a bunch of racists?!)

The story is, “An education problem looms: In a time of layoffs, the state hopes to inspire a new generation of educators,” by L.A. Times uninvestigative reporter, Seema Mehta.

Remember that name! That lady is going places.

Granted, Mehta gave the story a pretext to give it a wisp of plausibility: 55,000 California teachers could retire over the next seven years. Thus, we need to support “Obama’s” plan to spend 30 million taxpayer dollars, in order to entice people into spending up to six of the best years of their lives, and possibly $280,000 (2009 dollars), in order to get teaching degrees.

Mehta: “The state is facing a looming teacher shortage as baby boomers reach retirement age and fewer young people are expected to enter the field.”

Shortage shouting, even in the teaching biz? Paging Rob Sanchez!

Mehta’s story lurches back and forth between propagandists’ calls for hiring more teachers, and individual sob stories profiling laid-off teachers. (Unlike with illegal alien sob stories, however, these stories are legit, but Mehta refuses to put them in context.)

“The Obama administration has requested $30 million for a national campaign that focuses on young adults and mid-career professionals and on such high-need areas as science and math. In addition to reaching out to potential teachers, the U.S. Department of Education hopes to improve training programs. President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan plan to hold events in the fall highlighting the importance of teaching to the nation’s future.

“It’s a noble profession. In many other countries, children do aspire to be teachers, and they are regarded as some of the most important people in society,” said John White, the education department spokesman. “That’s what we need to do, so that we not only replace the teachers who are retiring but bring the most talented people to the field. . . . We need them to aspire to be the next generation of teachers.”

The California Teacher Corps was formed earlier this year, with the goal of placing 100,000 new teachers into classrooms over the next decade. The organization focuses on recruiting professionals who are changing careers.”

First of all, the numbers don’t jibe. As many as 55,000 California teachers retiring over the next seven years, extrapolates to as many as 78,570 over the next ten years, not 100,000.

But the numbers could be made to jibe. If the 55,000 retirement figure is in the ballpark, California likely will need at least 100,000 new teachers over the next ten years, due to the 800-pound gorilla in the room, which Mehta never mentions—immigration.

However, the same immigration that continually drives the need for new teachers, guarantees that there is ever less money to pay for them, as poor, unskilled, illiterate aliens—legal and illegal—drive out what is left of the state’s educated, skilled, American tax base.

Mehta never asks why highly educated, middle-aged professionals, or “the most talented people” would want to undertake the expense, time, and risk of studying to become teachers, when there is no guarantee of a job, and the California Department of Education is run by racist State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, who claims that white teachers are at fault for the black-white achievement gap.

Meanwhile, in the name of “diversity,” O’Connell welcomes incompetent black and Hispanic teacher candidates.

Mehta also never cites critics of the politicized, anti-intellectual, and expensive credentialing process, which entails an unconstitutional, political litmus test, and which exists to protect the jobs and power of racial socialist teacher ed professors, and to put off millions of talented, highly educated people, particularly from fields such as math, science, and engineering, who would be assets in the classroom. Want to attract more talented teacher candidates? Then throw out teacher ed (i.e., propaganda)-based, as opposed to discipline-based credentialing.

Conversely, when Mehta cites “Obama’s” purported plan to “improve training programs,” if we look at the track record of “Obama” and his terrorist partner, Bill Ayers, in wasting $159 million in Chicago Annenberg Challenge money, such “improvement” will mean further politicization and anti-intellectualism, which will further drive away “the most talented people.”

“Obama” wants to con (white) people into wasting their lives, and taking on debt that they may never be able to repay, chasing a chimera.

Perhaps most importantly, Mehta never mentions that many of the same California school districts laying off American teachers have for years been busily importing Filipinos and Mexicans under H1-B, non-immigrant visas. However, when those “non-immigrant” visas run out, the “non-immigrants” are not going anywhere.

And those districts will still find the money, with which to hire incompetent, racist, blacks and Hispanics.

Going back to the Clinton administration, the majority of the occupations projected for the greatest growth have been in “non-tradable domestic services”, like retail salesman, truck driver, waitress, nurse aide and home health aide (and those jobs are increasingly going to blacks and aliens).

In May 2004, economist Paul Craig Roberts asked rhetorically,

“Why then will Americans attend universities? Will Wal-Mart require an MBA to stock its shelves? Will nursing homes want their patients bathed by engineers?

Obviously, education and retraining are not answers to job loss from US employers substituting foreign labor for American labor.”

And then the Greatest Depression hit.

We’ve left the “information economy” in the dust, and now have an ignorance economy.

“Obama” and his media cronies want everyone to go to college, in order to reward and politically consolidate the power of the racial socialists running the antiversity, one of “Obama’s” greatest institutional strongholds.

So, the real story, the one Seema Mehta never told, is about immigration and racism, coming … and coming.

You can hear audio of Peter Brimelow talking on the Thom Hartman show on in this MP3 clip. (Thanks to Rob Sanchez for editing it.)

The story about the fraud case against Vision System is several months old. What little news coverage the story received has subsided, but the case is still working its way through the courts–and hopefully those arrested are still in jail. After obtaining a couple of the court documents I decided to revisit the case.

In February 2009 the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 11 people in 7 states. [11 arrested, indicted in multi-state visa fraud operation]–ICE Press release] The suspects are all of Indian origin but at this time I don’t have information on their immigration status.[Indians involved in major US H-1B visa racket, Times Of India, February 13, 2009] Many government agencies were involved in the investigation including the Department of Labor, Postal Inspection Service, Department of State, Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.

Several companies including Vision Systems are accused of visa fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy.

Patrick Thibodeau wrote a Computerworld article about the Vision Systems arrests, although you wouldn’t know it by the title of the article: “H-1B workers outnumber unemployed techies”. He had a comment that was quite alarming: (more…)

I will be on the Chuck Wilder talk-radio show on Tuesday July 28, at 1:34 PM PST. I will probably on until the top of the hour.

Wilder’s show is available online in streaming audio which can be listened to here.

There is a toll free call-in telephone number if you want to chat with us: 1-800-336-2225

When I heard that Moira Herbst of Businessweek wrote an article about Norm Matloff, I read it with extreme trepidation. Herbst is a skilled writer and journalist, but she is very much a corporate globalist who supports H-1B and outsourcing. Despite her obvious bias the article wasn’t as bad as I anticipated.

There are a few things in the article that I felt should be commented on.

To some opponents of H-1B visas, Matloff is something of a hero — and in a sense, the intellectual backbone of their movement.[ An Academic’s Labor Helps Fight H-1B Visas, BusinessWeek, June 28, 2009.]

That may be the most profound thing Herbst has ever written (which probably isn’t saying very much!). As far as I know, Norm Matloff is the first one to make the connection between H-1B and age discrimination. I first found out about Matloff many years ago when I was trying to figure out why I couldn’t find good engineering jobs. For many reasons I began to suspect my 40+ age was a factor (in one interview the manager asked me if I would have a problem riding go-karts with “the boys” on Friday). I stumbled into Matloff’s “Debunking” paper and much to my astonishment it read like my autobiography. The stories in that paper have been accused of being anecdotal, but they are the story of my ruined career. They aren’t anecdotal to me!

My journey into the H-1B issue originated from the wealth of information that Matloff provided on age discrimination in the computer/IT professions. (more…)