Alaska Needs Hundreds Of Foreign Teachers. Feds Want To Penalize Them By Charging Massive Amounts To Enter Country
EDUCATION GOVERNMENT & POLITICS ALASKA IN BRIEF Alaska Legislature passes resolution urging Trump administration waive visa fee for...
ALASKA IN BRIEF
Alaska Legislature passes resolution urging Trump administration waive visa fee for teachers
Students arrive for the first day of school at Harborview Elementary School in Juneau on Aug. 15, 2025 (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
The Alaska Legislature passed a resolution urging the Trump administration to waive a steep visa fee to allow the continued recruitment and hiring of international teachers.
Alaska school districts have increasingly relied on international hiring to fill an ongoing teacher shortage across the state, particularly in rural and remote districts. Last fall, the Trump administration issued an executive order increasing the H-1B visa fee from $5,000 per applicant to $100,000 per applicant — putting such visas out of reach for Alaska districts.
The Alaska Senate unanimously passed House Joint Resolution 39 on Tuesday, previously passed by the House, sending it on to Gov. Mike Dunleavy for consideration.
The H-1B visa program provides non-immigrant visas for highly skilled workers, including in education, health care and technology. In Alaska, districts have relied on international educators, particularly for teaching math, science and special education, according to the resolution. The visa is valid for up to six years.
Currently, roughly 570 international teachers are working in Alaska via the visa program. And there are over 1,000 teacher and staff openings in Alaska posted on a job board run by the Alaska Educator Retention and Recruitment Center, a division of the Alaska Council of School Administrators.
Alaska school officials say the new fee is an insurmountable financial burden for districts, as they are in the process of recruiting and hiring teachers for next year.
Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, carried the resolution in the Senate and said the roughly 2,000% increase in the fee has restricted the flow of critical education professionals coming into the state. “Unfortunately this means that many of these education professions will go unfilled, we just don’t have the resources to cover that $100,000,” Tobin said on Wednesday.
“HJR 39 simply asks our federal government to waive this fee,” Tobin said.
The Legislature’s support and the joint resolution reinforces proposed federal legislation backed by U.S. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan. It was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Murkowski in March but has not advanced since then.
