Prince George’s County Public Schools will give $4.22 million in back wages to 1,044 foreign teachers who federal officials say received illegally reduced wages when the school system forced them to pay their own visa fees.
Due to the “willfull nature” of these transgressions, the county schools have lost the right to renew the teachers’ temporary visas or apply for their permanent status.
“Obviously, this is not the outcome we had hoped for as these employees have provided an exceptional service to our school district,” Superintendent William Hite said. “PGCPS did everything possible to retain these excellent and valued employees. However, in the final analysis of the current state of our shrinking school budget and mounting legal fees, we determined that we simply could not afford to continue to operate this program.”
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division leveled the charges in April, when federal officials discovered that teachers in the H-1B foreign visa program were paying their own immigration-related fees.
The Wage and Hour Division has been investigating the public school system’s practices since 2007.
The teachers, who were hired between 2005 and 2010, paid fees ranging from $190 to $320 to file their visas; spent about $1,000 in immigration attorney fees; and shelled out another $3,500 in placement fees. Hundreds also paid a $500 anti-fraud filing fee.
Pushing this burden on the foreign teachers lowered their paychecks below those of American teachers, said Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.
“The Labor Department has the responsibility for ensuring that employers who use the H – 1B program follow the law and do not place U.S. workers at a disadvantage to H-1B workers,” Solis said. “We are pleased this investigation has been resolved with workers paid all the back wages to which they are entitled.”
But in addition to a $100,000 civil penalty, the county school system forefeits the right to keep its foreign teachers’ whose visas expire in the next two years.
Of the affected teachers, 161 will see their visas expire in July or August; 48 more lose their status in September, followed by 13 in October, 27 in November and seven more through January.
Hite originally indicated that he would appeal the ruling, saying that it “may have a devastating impact on PGCPS and its employees and the school system’s ability to continue to place a highly qualified teacher in every classroom.”
The school system cut 700 teaching positions after $13.3 million was cut from the fiscal 2011 budget, a 2 percent decrease in funding from last year, amid declining enrollment.
