Dr Glenville Ash­by

Ten years ago re­cruiters from the New York City De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion wooed Carib­bean teach­ers.It was an invit­ing of­fer that many of the re­gion's most sea­soned and qual­i­fied ed­u­ca­tors read­i­ly ac­cept­ed. To­day, the promise of liv­ing the prover­bial Amer­i­can dream has be­come night­mare.At the Wall Street of­fice of the Black In­sti­tute, a pub­lic pol­i­cy think tank, its ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, at­tor­ney Princess Lyles, ex­pressed be­wil­der­ment and out­rage that a sup­pos­ed­ly well-in­ten­tioned pro­gramme had cre­at­ed a sense of frus­tra­tion, hope­less­ness and even fear.

"You must un­der­stand that re­cruiters paint­ed an un­re­al­is­tic pic­ture to these teach­ers. This was a more am­bi­tious re­cruit­ment dri­ve than the '97 ef­fort, and pro­vi­sions were just not in place. They made promis­es that they could not guar­an­tee," she said.Lyles iden­ti­fied re­im­burse­ment for trav­el, hous­ing as­sis­tance, tu­ition to­ward ad­vanced de­grees, and a path­way to per­ma­nent res­i­dent sta­tus (con­comi­tant with le­gal pro­tec­tion for spous­es and chil­dren), as terms of the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ment that have not been met.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we have chil­dren of teach­ers, turn­ing 21 years of age, who will be de­port­ed."She re­ferred to this sce­nario as "be­ing aged out of the sys­tem," mean­ing that these chil­dren can­not be legal­ly car­ried by the par­ent whose sta­tus has not been ad­just­ed to per­ma­nent res­i­dent."This is just one of the many is­sues that are be­ing ad­dressed by us," she said.

Lyles was lat­er joined by the group's or­gan­is­er, Ebony Con­stant, who is a pub­lic pol­i­cy grad­u­ate, and founder Bertha Lewis, for­mer CEO of As­so­ci­a­tion for Com­mu­ni­ty Or­gan­i­sa­tions and Re­form Now (ACORN). To­geth­er, they paint­ed a pic­ture of des­per­ate teach­ers fi­nal­ly will­ing to chal­lenge a sys­tem that failed them.

Lack of af­ford­able hous­ing

In 2001, the New York City De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion re­spond­ed to a stark teacher short­age with an in­ter­na­tion­al re­cruit­ment dri­ve that im­pact­ed sev­er­al Caribbean is­lands."They came and at­tract­ed the very best. You are talk­ing about teach­ers with many years of ex­pe­ri­ence and some with a mas­ters de­gree," Con­stant said.Teach­ers from T&T, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, and St Lu­cia soon en­coun­tered dif­fi­cul­ties in find­ing ad­e­quate and af­ford­able hous­ing.

"Quite frankly, af­ter be­ing housed in dor­mi­to­ries for the first two weeks, the on­ly hous­ing as­sis­tance they re­ceived was the re­al es­tate agents show­ing up to mar­ket their over­priced prop­er­ties," not­ed Con­stant.

Dis­as­trous is­suance of "wrong" visas

How­ev­er, it is the gross mis­han­dling of visas that has had the most ad­verse im­pact. She went on to de­scribe a dizzy­ing ar­ray of cat­e­gories and sub-cat­e­gories used to la­bel and de­fine im­mi­grant work­ers."Ini­tial­ly, teach­ers were giv­en a J visa which is good for two or three years, but makes the path to res­i­den­cy a long and tax­ing one. Al­though the lat­ter batch of teach­ers was giv­en HB1 visas, many were la­belled in the EB3 cat­e­go­ry and not the EB2, giv­en to doc­tors, nurs­es and en­gi­neers." The lat­ter, she stat­ed, could ex­pe­dite the res­i­den­cy process.

"Why weren't Caribbean teach­ers treat­ed as the pro­fes­sion­als they are?" she then asked rhetor­i­cal­ly. Of the some 2,000 Caribbean teach­ers who had signed on­to the New York City De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion re­cruit­ment dri­ve, on­ly 800 are cur­rent­ly in the sys­tem."This means that many have left the pro­fes­sion, pos­si­bly re­turned home, or could well be liv­ing il­le­gal­ly in the US," Lyles added.The Black In­sti­tute is aware that many have ex­pressed lit­tle sym­pa­thy for the be­lea­guered teach­ers, ac­cus­ing them of self­ish­ness, be­ing too hasty, and hav­ing con­tributed to the re­gion's brain drain.

"We have heard the ar­gu­ments and seen some re­spons­es on the blogs. We un­der­stand that the is­sue is com­plex but at the end of the day we all have a right to make a de­ci­sion we think is best for our­selves and our chil­dren," Con­stant stat­ed.Ac­cord­ing to Lewis, the sys­tem has failed Caribbean teach­ers in par­tic­u­lar. A not­ed com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist, she chal­lenged the "sys­temic prob­lem" in the treat­ment of im­mi­grants from par­tic­u­lar coun­tries. She was far more com­bat­ive, ratch­et­ing up the rhetoric.

"Our the­o­ry is that Im­mi­gra­tion and the Board of Ed­u­ca­tion have a dif­fer­ent way of do­ing things when it comes to teach­ers from oth­er coun­tries. In fact, Caribbean teach­ers who were re­cruit­ed from Cana­da came out much bet­ter. If we are wrong, then prove it. Give us the da­ta of your deal­ings with teach­ers from oth­er coun­tries," she said. The De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion she not­ed, has not re­spond­ed to this sug­ges­tive in­quiry."This is a prob­lem that has noth­ing to do with bor­ders. It is a dirty lit­tle im­mi­gra­tion se­cret right here in New York. Fam­i­lies are up­root­ed; chil­dren are forced to re­turn to their re­spec­tive is­lands-places they know lit­tle or noth­ing about. And this is hap­pen­ing to chil­dren of pro­fes­sion­als," she com­ment­ed.

She stat­ed that at the mo­ment the on­ly re­course for these chil­dren now turn­ing 21 years old is en­trance in­to a vo­ca­tion­al or aca­d­e­m­ic pro­gramme."Now they, through no fault of their own, must spend mon­ey they don't have and ap­ply for a stu­dent visa which does not al­low them to work. Or they can do some­thing il­le­gal and pay some­one to mar­ry them."

Re­cent suc­cess­es

Since its in­cep­tion, the Black In­sti­tute has pub­lished an ex­haus­tive work­ing pa­per on the cur­rent de­ba­cle. It has met with the me­dia, com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, lo­cal politi­cians, and of­fi­cials at the De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion (DOE) and the may­or's of­fice. Some key bat­tles have been won in the process."Hav­ing prin­ci­pals write let­ters an­nu­al­ly on teach­ers, to some­how val­i­date their im­por­tance to the schools has end­ed," Lewis stat­ed. "This placed teach­ers in an awk­ward, al­most sheep­ish sit­u­a­tion-re­al­ly at the mer­cy of prin­ci­pals, some of whom can be vin­dic­tive. This has lift­ed a huge bur­den on teach­ers."

Al­so, in ag­gres­sive­ly air­ing the griev­ances of teach­ers, the De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion has ad­mit­ted re­spon­si­bil­i­ty-"a par­tial vic­to­ry and vin­di­ca­tion for many," ac­cord­ing to Lewis."We are now al­lowed to bring par­tic­u­lar cas­es in­volv­ing pos­si­ble de­por­ta­tion of fam­i­ly mem­bers to the fore-to be dealt with ex­pe­di­tious­ly. This is a pri­or­i­ty," she stressed. Progress is al­so be­ing made on cor­rect­ly cat­e­goris­ing teach­ers."We are now get­ting teach­ers on the EB2 track," she stat­ed, re­it­er­at­ing that they will be of­fered a faster route to res­i­den­cy.

"This is now be­ing looked at af­ter all these years."The Black In­sti­tute has al­so ral­lied the Unit­ed Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers (UFT) to join in the ad­vo­ca­cy for Caribbean teach­ers, a move that Lewis de­scribed as "slow in com­ing." She added that de­spite be­ing mem­bers of the UFT, their im­mi­gra­tion sta­tus pre­vent­ed the full rep­re­sen­ta­tion ac­cord­ed to union mem­bers.The Black In­sti­tute is in­ter­na­tion­al­is­ing the strug­gle for teach­ers, and has chal­lenged the labour unions in the Caribbean to get in­volved.

"Don't these bod­ies preach work­ers' sol­i­dar­i­ty glob­al­ly?" Lewis asked with a tone of sar­casm.She then in­vit­ed the Caribbean con­sulates to be­come part of the cam­paign and as­sist in "restor­ing the dig­ni­ty of its cit­i­zen­ry liv­ing in New York."

An­toinette Nes­bitt is one of the many Trinida­di­an teach­ers af­fect­ed by this cri­sis. Nes­bitt worked for 18 years at La­dy Ho­choy in Ari­ma as an ed­u­ca­tor and ad­min­is­tra­tor. She al­so served as a Spe­cial Olympics na­tion­al coach. She de­scribed be­ing re­cruit­ed to New York, on­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence "things sud­den­ly falling apart."She called the present sit­u­a­tion, "un­ten­able" and "wrench­ing." She al­so dis­missed crit­i­cisms of self­ish­ness lev­eled against the Caribbean teacher."I can on­ly speak for my­self. It was pro­fes­sion­al sui­cide for me to con­tin­ue in a spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion ca­pac­i­ty when there weren't any ser­vices to ac­com­mo­date such a pro­gramme. Fur­ther, my main fo­cus was my youngest child who need­ed med­ical at­ten­tion that Trinidad was not ad­e­quate­ly pro­vid­ing."

As a pro­pi­tious plan for a new be­gin­ning in New York turned on its head, Nes­bitt has be­come more vo­cal, cre­at­ing net­works among teach­ers whom she called as "in­den­tured." She re­count­ed count­less cas­es of dis­il­lu­sion­ment, frus­tra­tion, and even loss of life.She men­tioned the mur­der-sui­cide in­volv­ing a Ja­maican teacher. She and her two daugh­ters were mur­dered by her hus­band who turned the gun on him­self."Most of our teach­ers are women. It is al­so very frus­trat­ing for hus­bands who are not al­lowed to work. How do you ex­pect a man to feel ask­ing his wife for some mon­ey every day, just to sur­vive?" she asked, try­ing to make some sense of the tragedy.

"There's an­oth­er case of a Guyanese teacher who died sud­den­ly. When his spouse went to the Board of Ed­u­ca­tion, she was heart­less­ly told that her sta­tus died with him. So hav­ing up­root­ed her fam­i­ly, what do you ex­pect this woman and her chil­dren to do?"De­spite the tra­vails, Nes­bitt laud­ed the pro­fes­sion­al work of her coun­ter­parts."We were in­vit­ed by the black com­mu­ni­ty be­cause we were best suit­ed to deal with the cul­tur­al is­sues in the schools. We were asked to go in­to high-risk schools that oth­er teach­ers were in­ca­pable or re­luc­tant to han­dle. Chil­dren car­ry­ing loaded guns, liv­ing in shel­ters, car­ry­ing box cut­ters, drugs, you name it. But we have pre­vailed."

An­tic­i­pat­ing a "karmic" turn­around, Nes­bitt ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the good work and re­silience of the Caribbean teacher will be ac­knowl­edged and "wrongs will be put right.""We have lo­cal sen­a­tors and con­gress­men, the Pub­lic Ad­vo­cate, and the city unions on our side now. And, of course, it is the Black In­sti­tute that re­al­ly car­ried the ball."When asked if she en­vi­sioned an im­mi­nent res­o­lu­tion to this decade-old prob­lem, her re­sponse was: "The pieces are fi­nal­ly falling in­to place. I can­not say when, but we are all ex­pect­ing a break­through soon, very soon."