Will K-12 H1-Bs Peel Off Obama's Support?

As noted here, Obama still has some core White support: College Educated White women. Who alone benefit from Affirmative Action (non-College White women have the highest disapproval rates for all Whites). And are a good cultural fit for Obama as First Rockstar, the Celebrity to rule Celebrities. But the Center for Immigration Studies has a new report that suggests a wave of H1-B usage is breaking upon Education, particularly K-12, and could spread to other areas. Which might finally put College Educated White women in the same boat as their male counterparts, and non-College Whites of both sexes.


As noted in the report, H1-Bs have been used with great success in the Computer Science area in replacing older, more expensive American workers with visibly cheaper Foreign ones, who are younger besides (lower health care costs, perceived "hipness" etc.) The report for the Center for Immigration Studies notes:

n FY 2010, the Department of Labor certified 6,578 new K-12 jobs to be filled by H-1B workers, about 10 percent of the new certifications within the 65,000 general purpose ceiling; many other H-1B workers were approved for the 20,000 ceiling for those with advanced degrees, and others who came into the system outside of the numerical ceilings (primarily people in higher education.)

The H-1B K-12 educators were thus a small minority within the H-1B program, and a much smaller minority within the universe of kindergarten, elementary, and secondary teachers, but what did the use of this program by some school districts show?

My sense, after pouring over the detailed DoL data on this single year’s worth of K-12 certifications, is that some of the implications of this limited database are troublesome (in two different ways), some are bizarre, and others are puzzling.

[The report author notes that the Dept. of Labor, unlike other Federal Depts, makes their raw data available. The link to the Dept. of Labor data, sadly all in Microsoft Access files is here. For those unable to run MS Access directly, and needing a dump into CSV or directly into MySQL, there are instructions here that have been known to work. From the reports by users at the link it seems the best/safest way is to make a CSV dump of each table, and then import them manually into manually created tables in a new MySQL database. Tedious but effective.]

Among the findings were: the employers using H1-Bs in K-12 were concentrated in Texas (1,426 certifications), California (247), and Louisiana (313), besides Maryland with 632 certifications. Houston and Dallas accounted for most of the Texas certifications. Baltimore most of Maryland. For occupational breakdowns, most of the certifications were for special education teachers (305) , or bilingual teachers (664).

The implication is that K-12 is transitioning to H1-B visa employment. These holders are significantly cheaper, younger, and most of all, compliant. They can't fuss to the Union, because they can be replaced at any time and sent home with near unlimited manpower in other places. So far this usage of H1-B visas in K-12 is limited to the bigger city school systems. But the advantages for hard-pressed school boards (cheap teachers who can be easily replaced without union fuss) is obvious. So long, "nice White lady" from "Teach For America!"

Interestingly enough, bilingual teachers form a large portion of the H1-B visa pool in K-12. Suggesting that school boards (and charter schools) want cheap, compliant non-natives brought over on the H1-B visa rather than native Spanish speakers. This is quite interesting because it kicks a major prop out from under school system support -- local Hispanic patronage. Most Latino majority school districts are not oriented towards teaching students but maximizing job patronage. Since the school is often the city's biggest employer. Even Latinos can get hurt by diversity, a useful point to make. As Machiavelli noted in the Prince, a man will forgive the murder of his parents sooner than being made poor.

H1-B visas mean only one thing for wages: considerably lower ones. Essentially we are seeing teaching being lowered to Third World levels, and probably quite rapidly. Because we have a Third World population, particularly with K-12 students, but demands for a First World education system. Something has to give, and that will be, first, teacher salaries. Those hanging on to their jobs will do so at H1-B visa rates, just like in computer programming and the like.

Also notable is that Charter Schools are the worst offenders in participating in H1-B visa programs, and have the most complaints against them (for teacher abuse, fees, and the like) lodged against them with the Dept. of Labor. Bizarrely, there is a fellow named Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Islamist of mixed reputation foolishly granted a green card by the US State Dept. after first being denied, who has gamed the US Charter school system.

Essentially what Gülen is doing is gaming the Charter School system. He sets up a Charter School, gets federal money (a lot of it, with very little oversight) and imports lots of teachers, on the H1-B visa program to ostensibly teach Turkish. The demand for which is near zero. It is basically a corrupt scam to create a massive kick-back and patronage system. Once again an ethnic, nepotistic network scams a government system set up for trustworthy Calvinist New Englanders.

There are also massive pay differentials among the H1-B visa holders, in places right next door to each other (New York and New Jersey, Elgin and Chicago IL) amounting to as much as $30,000 or more. Could there be … kickbacks?

Yes Obama's education bubble, with massive amounts of federal stimulus money (now expiring) shoveled into schools, created the same kind of exploitation and crook-dom that the housing bubble, and its no-document loans did. Not surprising.

Essentially, the market as it existed for K-12 teachers, employing "nice White ladies" and men, would not and did not last. We are seeing its dying already. Regardless of "mean Republicans" cutting state budgets, local districts and shady businessmen, running "regular" and charter schools respectively, are sure to pick up on the ability to create cheap and compliant labor forces. Not just for teachers, but every type of administrative function except the top. For the Charter School operators, most being "not-for-profit" (but that's a mere bagatelle) the ability to kick-back a portion of above market salaries that are paid for by federal and state funds must be an overwhelming temptation. Particularly since Education is not built on the assumption that people operating it are mostly crooks. Rather, it is built on the trust that nearly everyone involved sincerely loves teaching, education, and a better future for the students.

People vote their pocketbooks. College Educated White women are overwhelmingly employed in places like K-12 Education, the media, health care, corporate finance, human resources, and the like. Instilling bare, naked fear that they could be replaced by a person younger, more subservient (conservatives cannot stress this enough), and CHEAPER than themselves … and will be, unless a nationalist approach is taken through conservatism, is probably the most productive action conservatives can take against Obama. Obama's great weakness is that his coalition is prone to fighting amongst themselves over the limited spoils. White Women with College Education can be made to fear. Know the fear that their male peers in Engineering, or Finance, or Accounting, have already felt: replacement.

Particularly if "subservience" is stressed, the idea that say, a "fat and brassy" White College Educated woman will be replaced by a "meek and mild" Vietnamese girl at half the cost, and with deference to (beta) White males at the very top, is something that will go over like gangbusters. There's nothing White women hate more than being told they're being replaced by a younger, more subservient (to beta males) model. Since most of the top management at most places resembles a cross between Tim Geithner and Don Knotts, rather than say Charlie Sheen or Russell Brand, this wedge has some power.

Already, nursing save the ER staff is mostly H1-B. You can't visit a hospital room or floor (save perhaps ICU or CCU) and not find mostly or all H1-Bs (now from Vietnam or the Philippines). Trust me on this, I know. The same can be true, for HR people, or media ad buyers, or really almost any office work. While it is true that Mexican-origin illegal aliens from Chiapas or Cuidad Juarez won't be good fits, women and men from India, or the Philippines, or Vietnam certainly will. Many of them already are, in occupations like Radiology, or dental assistance, or even now K-12 education.

Yes, the usage of K-12 H1-Bs is small now. So is the first trickle of water bursting through a fractured dam or dike. Eventually it will be a tidal wave. With nowhere for College Educated White women to go. What will they do? How will they work? How can they support themselves? They can't. They won't. And this is precisely the argument conservatives should make to this target. Obama is bad for their bank account because he'll replace them with H1-B visa holders. Younger and more subservient, and definitely cheaper.