On Jan. 24 the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, a union that represents Denver Public Schools (DPS) teachers, organized a district wide walkout in order to receive better pay for educators. As the ongoing DPS strikes continued to gain fuel, a new warning has been issued against teachers working on visas who are considering joining the strikes.
According to The Denver Post, on Jan. 24 an HR official from the DPS district reportedly sent a letter to a DPS school threatening to report striking teachers of either H or J visas to immigration services and the U.S. State Department. The letter was then released that evening by the Colorado People’s Alliance. H-1B work visas are issued to skilled professionals in fields that lack enough experts in the U.S. while J-1 student visas are issued to research scholars, professors and cultural exchange visitors.
District officials have since called the letter “an error.”
The school district’s law firm, Kolko & Casey P.C., does have guidelines regarding teachers on H or J visas in the event of a labor strike. The guidelines state that DPS must inform the U.S. Department of Labor if strikes begin due to the requirements of the Labor Conditions Application that are part of the H-1B process.
DPS, however, is not required to report the names of employees participating in the strikes to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
The DPS district has since apologized for sending the immigration letter. District spokesman Will Jones said, “An incorrect communication was provided by a DPS employee regarding our educators on H-1B and J-1 visas.”
The letter was thought by some to simply be a “scare tactic,” but what should be scary is the fact that the district thought it was okay to release it in the first place. DPS further discredits itself as a supportive institution that encourages diversity and welcomes immigrant students by turning on their immigrant teachers, making it difficult for teachers to return to work as they stress about something that shouldn’t have been a problem to begin with.
The district statement said the error was a “misinterpretation of the information that we received from our immigration firm.” DPS officials have expressed their “deepest apologies for any anxiety that was caused by this error.”
The strikes, now coupled with this new interference from the district, will cause exhaustive pain for both students and teachers in the short term. Long term, however, the ongoing negotiations are just the first step in securing a stronger education for students and a more livable wage for teachers.
An apology from DPS doesn’t solve the problem that the money needed for both teachers and students to thrive within their education is not being distributed as it should be. It is entirely unnecessary for the school district to inform the government of the names of the strike participants, so maybe the questions they should be asking themselves should pertain to their mission as a public school system rather than the immigration status of their teachers.
