Filipino Teachers

[Jollygoodfellow]

Seems a never ending amount of people ripping off some one. :728:Placement firm must refund $1.8M to Filipino teachersIn return for their new teaching jobs in the U.S., teachers say Universal Placement International (UPI) charged them thousands of dollars up front, demanded 10% of their salaries up front in their first year of teaching — and 20% in their second year — and held on to their U.S. work visas if they refused to pay, among other allegations. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which represented the teachers in the case, said the ruling is " victory for teachers and for fundamental human rights." Over the past three years, UPI has brought about 360 teachers to Louisiana. The union estimates that each paid about $5,000 in "marketing fees," which would make UPI liable to repay $1.8 million. The administrative law judge in the case, Shelly Dick, also ruled that UPI violated state law by collecting placement fees before teachers started working — and that a few teachers ultimately ended up working in jobs other than those they'd been promised. The ruling was released late Thursday. The teachers' union alleges that UPI and a sister company in the Philippines kept teachers in "virtual servitude" by holding onto their H-1B visas unless teachers kept paying inflated fees, commissions and rents on shabby group apartments. Teachers paid upward of $16,000 apiece — about four times what they could earn annually as teachers in the Philippines — to get and keep jobs with public schools here. The H-1B visa program each year brings about 6,000 teachers to the USA to fill hard-to-staff jobs in subjects such as math, foreign languages and special education. An estimated 19,000 migrant teachers work in U.S. schools, according to AFT, which last year warned of "widespread and egregious" abuses of imported teachers. UPI attorney Murphy J. Foster III said he's "very optimistic" that the decision will be rejected by a district court judge. He plans to appeal, saying Thursday's decision is "internally inconsistent," since it doesn't challenge the validity of UPI's contracts with the Filipino teachers. "If the contract is valid, then money is owed," he said. Foster also said it's unconstitutional for Louisiana to require that firms doing business with the state maintain an office in Louisiana.http://www.usatoday....pino16_ST_N.htm

[TheMason]

The OFW racket is set up so that numerous people from the govt to the recruitment agencies to the family of the OFW all get their pound of flesh from the OFW. The only thing in this article that is shocking to me is that they found 360 Filipino teaches qualified to teach in the US. My experience with teachers and the education system here have not left me with a good opinion of the quality or professionalism of the teachers.

[acman]

Wish i knew where they was teaching in Louisiana!

[Mr Lee]

Wish i knew where they was teaching in Louisiana!

Probably spread out at most public schools.

[retired]

Thats great for those teachers in the US but the only way this type of thing stops is for the 'sister' organization here in the Philippines to be charged as well . Unfortunately , that's not likely to happen .

[tom_shor]

The biggest abusers of Filipinos is not foreigners it is other Filipinos no matter what the government trys to tell them. Hopefully the ruling will stick. I encountered something similar here in Arizona with Filipino hotel workers. They were staying in three bedroom apartments. 4 to a room for $600 a month each. These were not shabby apartments but certainly not worth $7200 a month. Normal rent for a comparable apartment here is around $1000 a month.