DCPS promised them green cards. Now, these international teachers have nowhere to turn

When the teacher accepted a job at D.C. Public Schools in 2022, it wasn’t the only offer he had on the table. With 20 years of teaching experience both abroad and in the U.S., he was an attractive candidate for many school systems across the country looking to address the significant increase in demand for bilingual education.

But D.C. offered him a job perk that pushed him from a maybe to a yes: the promise of sponsorship for a green card, or legal permanent residency in the U.S. 

But now, three years later, that offer has been killed. Even after the D.C. Council set aside additional funds to continue green card sponsorships, DCPS says it simply won’t spend the money. The teacher, who spoke with The 51st on the condition of anonymity out of fear of professional consequences, is now facing the possibility of having to leave the country at the end of the school year — or even sooner, depending on whether DCPS helps him extend his work visa.

“At the beginning, I was super mad,” he tells The 51st.“Then I started to get frustrated. Now I'm kind of sad. I had all the chances to go to another [district].”

He’s not alone. Some 200 other international teachers who took jobs with DCPS under the expectation that the school system would help them land a coveted green card are now facing uncertain futures. Some are at the tail end of their work visas — which are valid for three years at a time, renewable once — raising the very real possibility that they will soon have to leave the country. Others still have a few years left to work, but keep wondering: Why put in the effort if the school system won’t do the same?

“They're always asking us for commitment,” says the teacher, who works in Northwest. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you have to stay later than your contract says. You have to come in on Saturdays. You have to come in early. Work from home, do whatever you need to teach the students.’ OK, what are you offering me?”

But DCPS officials say the program to sponsor green cards was meant to be limited — up to 15 sponsorships a year — and contingent on continued funding and resources. “The district made clear that the pandemic-era green card program was a pilot, dependent on both budget and legal capacity,” said a spokesman for the school system.

The green card program started in 2021, when DCPS set aside some federal pandemic aid to hire more international teachers and eventually sponsor them for legal permanent residency in the U.S. The teachers would first be hired on an H-1B work visa, and if they performed well on required evaluations, would be on track for a green card. 

Data from the Department of Homeland Security shows just how aggressively DCPS started hiring international educators. In 2021, DCPS sponsored 19 employees — across a workforce of some 9,000 employees. By the next year it was up to 73, and by 2024 it hit 118. Over the last five years, DCPS has sponsored H-1B visas for 336 employees — making it the city’s leading sponsor of employees on these visas. (Georgetown University is second.)

And D.C. wasn’t alone: School districts in Milwaukee and places as far-flung as Alaska and South Dakota were increasingly looking to international educators to fill the teaching ranks in places with staffing shortages. In D.C., the district needed to address the growing demand for dual language and language immersion programs, so much so that in 2020 the D.C. State Board of Education passed a resolution urging the city to do more to attract international educators — including by sponsoring them for visas and green cards. 

“We have experience that some teachers here don't have,” said the teacher who spoke with us.

“We’re giving [students] the chance to understand the global vision of a world in an intercultural way,” said another teacher, who was offered a similar position in another school district that sponsored green cards — but said the pay and benefits DCPS offered were better. This teacher — who similarly asked not to be identified over fears about professional repercussions — says they have also gotten involved in extra-curricular activities, and helping students who have been impacted by nearby gun violence. “Sometimes I get to the school at seven in the morning and when we have after school activities, it's seven in the night and I’m still in the school.”

As word started spreading earlier this year that DCPS would no longer sponsor green cards, teachers and their allies started reaching out to parents and councilmembers to try and urge the school system to reverse course. The council acted, adding just over $230,000 to the school system’s billion-dollar budget for a dedicated attorney to help file required green card applications. 

The apparent victory, though, was short-lived. By August DCPS was saying it would not spend the money, which became available on Wednesday as part of the city’s budget for 2026.  

“The single-year funding allotment designated by the D.C. Council would not sustain resurrecting a pilot program that can take up to nine years of financial and administrative commitment to complete,” said the DCPS spokesman.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson says he doesn’t agree with DCPS choosing not to spend the money that lawmakers allocated, and plans to raise the issue with Chancellor Lewis Ferebee. “There was a lot of testimony in support of continuing this program,” he says. “The council agreed with the numerous public witnesses that this is a program that’s worth continuing. I don’t understand why DCPS is choosing to just turn its back on this.”

The Washington Teachers’ Union has continued advocating for DCPS to keep sponsoring green cards for international educators, but there may also be another challenge on the horizon. The Trump administration recently announced that new H-1B applications will come with a $100,000 fee; if that policy takes effect, it’s likely that most school districts will simply stop hiring foreign teachers. (The School Superintendents Association recently said it is pushing for an exemption for educators.)

As all of this plays out, the teachers who spoke to The 51st said they are unnerved, restless, and worried about the future. But even as they stress about whether they will have to leave the U.S. and the lives they have built here, they also told us that they remain committed to the work they do on a daily basis. 

“Give me the chance to continue working here like a normal human being, nothing else. I'm not asking for something that they didn't promise,” one teacher said. “I cannot give up and I'm not going to give up. I still believe in what I do for my kids.”