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\nAUSTIN, TEXAS – AUGUST 15: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks during a news conference in the State Capitol on August 15, 2025 in Austin, Texas.
\nPhoto by Brandon Bell\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\nAUSTIN, TEXAS – AUGUST 15: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks during a news conference in the State Capitol on August 15, 2025 in Austin, Texas.
\nPhoto by Brandon Bell\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants state lawmakers to write a flat rule into law: no employee of a Texas public school may hold an H-1B work visa, ever. He unveiled the demand at an Aug. 18 campaign-season event in Austin, framing it as one front in a larger fight against what he calls outside interference in the classroom. Fewer than 350 teachers and staff statewide currently hold the visa, but the handful of districts that lean on it most heavily \u2014 Dallas, Houston, and the Houston suburb of Alief \u2014 also serve some of the largest shares of Latino students anywhere in the state, which pulls a fairly obscure federal-visa dispute into schools built around working-class Latino families.<\/p>\n
What Abbott Wants Lawmakers to Pass<\/p>\n
Speaking at an event hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation \u2014 a conservative think tank that has long pushed against what it sees as outside ideological influence in schools \u2014 Abbott told reporters, according to the Texas Tribune<\/a>, that “exactly zero” school employees should hold H-1B status. The bill he wants would do more than block new sponsorships going forward \u2014 it would also force out teachers already working under the visa today, since Abbott has said the rule should apply to current holders and future applicants alike<\/a>.<\/p>\n He paired that ask with a second one: a ban on districts accepting gifts or striking funding deals with foreign governments, mirroring a rule already on the books for Texas public universities.<\/p>\n Both proposals build on a directive Abbott signed in late January, which froze new H-1B paperwork at state agencies and public universities through the end of the Legislature’s next regular session, set to close May 31, 2027. That freeze alone touches somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,100 to 1,200 university and state-agency employees, based on the individual campus totals reported around the time of the order<\/a>.<\/p>\n The “Foreign Influence” Argument Behind It<\/p>\n Abbott has folded the school proposal into a wider case that Texas classrooms are absorbing money and curricula from abroad without enough scrutiny. He’s pointed specifically to Austin ISD’s Arabic-language program, which researchers at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies have traced to roughly $462,000<\/a> in funding from Qatar Foundation International between 2016 and 2022, along with districts that have run Confucius Classroom partnerships tied to the Chinese government. Those arrangements are documented and real \u2014 but they’re a separate issue from H-1B teacher hiring. The visa program doesn’t fund curricula or create a partnership between a district and a foreign government; it simply lets a school district sponsor one foreign worker’s legal right to work in the U.S.<\/p>\n Abbott has also argued that districts already have in-state tools to solve teacher shortages, pointing to a merit-pay program that pushes bonus money toward high-need and rural schools. Independent research on that program<\/a> has found it modestly improved retention in participating districts, but didn’t move the needle much at the campuses with the deepest staffing problems.<\/p>\n Federal data reviewed by KXAN puts statewide district-level H-1B sponsorship at 337 people \u2014 roughly a tenth of one percent<\/a> of everyone teaching in Texas public schools. One district dominates that count: Dallas ISD alone had 171 visa applications approved for employees over the year ending June 30, 2026, a total that the Dallas Morning News reports tops every other K-12 system in the country<\/a>. Widen the lens to every H-1B sponsor in Texas \u2014 private employers included \u2014 and Dallas ISD drops to 12th statewide, well behind the corporate sponsors that dominate the program<\/a>, led by outsourcing firms such as Cognizant and Infosys. Alief ISD sponsors 17 of the visas; Houston ISD’s total runs smaller still, in roughly the same range districts of its size typically report. Districts generally use the program to land bilingual instructors and special-education and hard-to-staff math and science teachers \u2014 positions that can sit open for months when a district recruits only within Texas.<\/p>\n Where a Ban Would Land Hardest<\/p>\n The districts leaning most on H-1B sponsorship line up closely with Texas’s biggest Latino-serving systems. Dallas ISD’s enrollment runs 71.2% Hispanic<\/a>, Houston ISD’s is 60.5% Hispanic<\/a>, and Alief ISD sits at 63.1% Hispanic<\/a> \u2014 all well above the statewide share, even though Hispanic students have made up a majority of Texas’s public-school enrollment for more than a decade. An Alief ISD spokesperson told KXAN the district uses the visa program to recruit and hold onto teachers “in areas where there is a limited supply of certified candidates,” warning that losing the option would hurt consistency for students. Dallas ISD’s statement to the outlet struck a similar note, saying that if the governor’s expectation becomes reality, the district will need more homegrown teachers in the pipeline to replace the ones it would have to let go.<\/p>\n Abbott’s Democratic opponent this November, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa of Austin, argues the real story is a shortage his own policies helped create. “Texas public schools are in crisis, and desperate districts have sought teachers” from abroad for years, Hinojosa said in a statement<\/a> \u2014 arguing the practice long predates this particular news cycle. She’s also gone after the contrast between Abbott’s approach to schools and his treatment of corporate visa sponsors, pointing out in a separate campaign statement<\/a> that firms like Oracle and Tesla, among the state’s largest private H-1B users, have received property-tax breaks under legislation Abbott signed while facing none of the restrictions now aimed at classrooms.<\/p>\n The Enrollment Backdrop<\/p>\n