The limit on H-1B visas is negatively affecting primary and secondary schools’ ability to recruit and hire teachers.  The closing of this year’s H-1B program is forcing many schools to cancel international recruiting trips and turn away foreign applicants, despite worries that they will be short-staffed when the new school year begins.

When these schools began facing teacher-shortages years ago, school officials started looking overseas for potential employees.  It is estimated that at least several thousand foreign nationals are teaching in the United States on H-1B visas.  These teachers tend to be concentrated in large urban areas as well as in rural areas. 

Many immigration advocate groups have pushed Congress to raise the limit and permit some foreign workers, including primary and secondary school teachers, to be exempt from the limit, just as college professors and visiting scholars are.  However, Congress is not expected to raise the limit this year, as the issue is probably too controversial to address in an election year.

Although critics of the H-1B program have argued that these visas allow companies to bring in foreign labor for jobs that Americans can fill, educators argue that this does not apply in the classroom.  Estimates show that schools will have to fill 200,000 teaching jobs each year until the end of the decade.