More than 500 public school districts across the United States currently employ H-1B visa holders as teachers. Collectively, that's over 2,300 foreign workers standing in front of American kids in American classrooms, drawing American taxpayer salaries.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott just said his state is done participating.
"Exactly zero Texas public school employees should be here on H-1B visas," Abbott declared, announcing a push to ban all H-1B visa holders from teaching positions in Texas public schools. "We need to find Texans or Americans who can educate our students. Period."
The move comes after revelations that the Austin Independent School District accepted funding from Qatar to bring in foreign teachers for Arabic language and cultural instruction. Foreign educators imported via H-1B visas from Qatar and China were placed in Texas classrooms — a detail that caught the attention of Kate Bierly, Campaign Director for Next Generation Texas at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
"There is no circumstance in which it is acceptable that Texas children should be indoctrinated with radical Islamist ideologies in Texas schools," Bierly said.
Abbott framed it in broader terms. "The minds of our students are driven by influences that they are exposed to in our public schools," he said. "We cannot condone the quiet indoctrination of our children in the classroom."
This isn't Abbott's first swing at the H-1B program. He previously froze H-1B visa petitions across state agencies and state universities — a move that generated the usual howling from the cheap-labor lobby but produced zero measurable consequences for Texas government operations.
The scale of the problem goes beyond Texas. A National Education Association report from October 2025 documented the reach of H-1B hiring in public education nationwide. Alaska's Bering Strait School District alone received 35 H-1B approvals. The Lower Kuskokwim School District got 20. Remote districts have been quietly outsourcing their teaching workforce for years, and nobody in Washington raised a hand.
The standard objection writes itself: teacher shortages. Districts can't find enough qualified Americans, so they have to look overseas. Which is an interesting argument to make about a profession that requires a state-issued teaching certificate, a background check, and — in most states — a master's degree within five years of hire. We don't have a shortage of qualified Americans. We have a shortage of districts willing to pay competitive salaries to attract them.
Abbott's directive is straightforward. "For public schools, no H-1B visa applicants or current users can be employees in Texas public schools," he said. "We're tired of the federal government not putting limits on who can come in under H-1Bs."
The H-1B program was sold as a tool for importing highly specialized tech talent that America supposedly couldn't produce on its own. Two decades later, it's staffing elementary school classrooms in Austin with teachers funded by the government of Qatar.
