

Solve hard-to-fill vacancies by
Immigrants and Migrants’ Recruitment: A Sustainable Solution for the Teacher Shortage
by Christian S. Manansala, M. Ed.
As a component of Tagpros' continuous efforts to educate school district stakeholders about the contributions and roles of immigrants and migrants in various industries and educational institutions across the United States, we present a fresh viewpoint on how these foreign-born entrants may be able to aid school systems—and potentially put an end to the ongoing teacher shortage. With a new perspective that the immigrant population is expanding quickly each year and the conviction that this particular group can deliver the same quality instruction as their local peers, a new horizon may be in store for US educational systems should they hire and breed thousands of foreign-born teachers and graduates who are already in the US or who are about to enter its borders, either as permanent residents or as migrant workers.
In Droves

According to Pew Research's latest data (2020), there will be a staggering 78 million foreign-born people living in the United States by 2065. The number of immigrants residing in the United States has more than doubled since 1965, when American immigration regulations took the place of a national quota system. In addition, the research noted that the percentage of immigrants in the US now is 13.7%, nearly three times what it was in 1970 (4.8%).
Moreover, the United States welcomes over a million immigrants annually. China, India, Mexico, and the Philippines were the top four countries of origin for new immigrants entering the United States in previous years, and data indicates that Asian immigrants have outnumbered Hispanic immigrants in the majority of years since 2009, with Asians expected to overtake Hispanics as the largest group in the country by 2055.
Immigrant teachers and barriers
Immigrants currently account for 13% of the population but just 16% of the labor force. Given that a large portion of this group is highly educated and skilled, their increasing population presents enormous hurdles for both integration and integration policy. Comparable employment rates are found among immigrants with low levels of education and their native counterparts. With educated immigrants, however, this is not the case.

According to a recent OECD research (2014), immigrants globally have lower employment rates than their native-born counterparts. Furthermore, they have a nearly 50% higher chance of being overqualified or underemployed for the job even when they are employed. The majority of the countries mentioned in the report, including the US, are not making the most of the potential immigrants offer because their credentials and prior work experience are generally undervalued and, most of the time, inacceptable because the education they received in their country of birth is regarded as being of a low quality in comparison to that of native-born citizens.
The K–12 teaching profession has been identified as one of many occupations where foreign work experience and credentials of immigrants are overlooked. Since the majority of those involved with educational affairs believe that foreign colleges and universities might not be on par with US institutions, the majority of states demand that foreign graduates have their college transcripts evaluated and translated. In addition, despite the fact that these immigrants have taken similar preparation courses before, have been teachers for many years, and have been evaluated by equally qualified foreign evaluators, most states still require them to enroll in teacher preparation programs. Some educational systems do not even recognize their years of service in foreign schools because they are paid at the bottom of the pay scale for school districts, much like new instructors who are just starting out in the classroom.
These obstacles make the teaching profession unattractive to these people as a career choice. As an alternative, they will take any odd or clerical work available in their first year to gain experience in the country and wait for openings through their current employment or by applying for a position of the same nature at another organization. Many people will find this particular technique to be sensible because they are unlikely to use their pocket money to pay for an expensive teacher training program instead of using it for transition and settling. Evidence from other nations suggests that processes for recognizing foreign credentials and translating them into local equivalents are highly regarded by employers and are linked to better labor market outcomes.

According to the OECD report (Migration Policy Debates, 2014), at least 75% of immigrants with university degrees who requested recognition of their credentials were granted in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Nevertheless, it appears that few immigrants seek to have their credentials recognized due to the opaqueness of the processes and the overbearing bureaucracy, particularly in highly regulated professions like teaching.
Only 11% of teachers in US public schools are foreign-born due to barriers in the K–12 teaching profession, and they are underrepresented in most teaching categories (GMU, Institute for Immigration Research, 2019).

Recruitment of Immigrants
Multiple studies show that even though there is a growing need for teachers, the number of qualified candidates is rapidly declining each year. This is because teaching careers typically involve lower pay, longer workdays, and subpar school site leadership. The ongoing retirement of experienced teachers makes this situation worse, and the majority of educational institutions lack a pipeline for producing new teachers to fill future demands. According to the Teacher Shortage Estimates below, demand for teachers in the US is expected to increase over the next few years while supply is expected to decline (Sutcher, Darling-Hammond, and Carver-Thomas, 2016).

Note: The supply line represents the midpoints of the upper and lower-bound teacher supply estimates. Years on the horizontal axis represent the latter annual year in the school year.
Source: Economic Policy Institute (2022). Recreated with permission from Figure 1 in Leib Sutcher, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Desiree Carver-Thomas, A Coming Crisis in Teaching? Teacher Supply, Demand, and Shortages in the U.S., Learning Policy Institute, September 2016. See the report for full analysis of the shortage and for the methodology.
Considering that over a million immigrants are expected to immigrate to the US in the upcoming years, we think that immigrant and migrant recruitment can solve the problem of the supply and demand gap for teachers if the federal or state governments make it easier to obtain credentials and comply with pre-employment requirements. The opportunity will be enormous for schools as immigrants will undoubtedly play a vital and key role. One option is to grant foreign teachers who have worked as educators in their former home states reciprocal licenses. Another option is to allow immigrants to enter US classrooms as novices, with some type of emergency teaching credentials, while enrolled in subsidized teacher preparation programs. For multilingual pupils who might not be as familiar with US conventions, traditions, and social standards, these foreign-born professors will not only impart knowledge but also act as cultural ambassadors. Immigrant teachers are more likely to share comparable stories and histories with their students as well as incorporate their culture and language into their curricula. Notably, compared to native-born teachers, teachers who are foreign-born tend to have a more favorable perception of their immigrant students' skills and abilities and help them to have a better understanding of their students (GMU, 2019).
Tagpros may be able to help in the search for possible applicants, as well as with vetting and documentation processing, if US educational systems think that these foreign-born professionals could be a feasible solution to their staffing problems. With almost 50K pre-screened candidates and connections to the Embassies of the Philippines, Mexico, China, and India, Tagpros' Immigrant Database (TID) platform can be a gold mine for school district stakeholders looking for candidates in their own backyard or for school district leaders fed up with the unregulated nature of the J-1 exchange-visitor program, which results in wage abuses and unfair labor practices for both participating and non-participating parties. In the meantime, hundreds more people are searching for employment possibilities in the US from abroad and are ready to be added to the TID should a pipeline buildup be deemed necessary by any school district.

TID Platform, 2023
In its capacity as a retained search firm and technology company, Tagpros has compiled a list of immigrants and migrant workers with a variety of visas through its TID for school districts looking to fill critical content areas, including Mathematics, Science, Special Education, and Bilingual Education, among others. We believe that as we begin to offer our platform to innovative school district leaders for the upcoming academic year, this could be the solution that finally ends the dire shortage of teachers while also providing a long-term career path for foreign-born professionals looking for teaching jobs abroad.
References:
Budiman, Abby (2020), “Key Findings About US Immigrants,” Pew Research Center, August 20, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/
Furuya, Yukiko; Nooraddini, Mohammad Ismail; Wang, Wenjing; Waslin, Michele (2019). “A portrait of foreign-born teachers in the United States,” George Mason University (GMU), Institute for Immigration Research, https://d101vc9winf8ln.cloudfront.net/documents/29869/original/Teacher_Paper_FINAL_WebVersion_012219.pdf?1548268969
Learning Policy Institute (2018), Understanding Teacher Shortages: 2018 Update, CA: Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/understanding-teacher-shortages-interactive?gclid=CjwKCAjw5dqgBhBNEiwA7PryaKz6NFIEe5nCwVOCLQRpeCt30CU39C03ylqSa9s5ENFNHPU906FnSBoCXnEQAvD_BwE
OECD (2014), “Labour Market Integration of Immigrants and their Children: Developing, Activating and Using Skills”, International Migration Outlook 2014, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/migr_outlook-2014-en.
Sutcher, L., Darling-Hammond, L., and Carver-Thomas, D. (2016). A Coming Crisis in Teaching? Teacher Supply, Demand, and Shortages in the U.S. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute. https://doi.org/10.54300/247.242.

About the Author
Christian S. Manansala is an immigrant from Manila; and has taught in Virginia and California public schools for almost 20 years. When he migrated to the United States in 2001, he started a teaching career in Vallejo CA using an emergency credential; and worked on his license while inside the classroom. Prior to teaching, he was an administrator and recruitment director in Manila, Philippines, and has worked as consultants for various institutions in Beijing, Hong Kong, Manila, and Washington DC. Meanwhile, Mr. Manansala is a Managing Partner of Tagpros Children International, a nonprofit dedicated for capacity-building and training of K-12 education stakeholders.
Interested? Solve hard-to-fill vacancies by