FSU team wins greater union protections and support for international members

5/9/2025

Dear UMB community,

Executive orders and federal agency directives issued since January 20, 2025 have carried numerous threats of detention of visa and green card holders who engage in writing, speech, and protest, and have incited fear in all visa and green card holders around ordinary travel, the use of social media, and applying for immigration status change and naturalization. This past weekend a team of FSU members took our demand for material protections and support for members who are visa or green card holders/international/foreign-born to our statewide parent union, the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA).  Our proposal to revise the MTA’s legal services policy and to make discounted legal services available for international members was considered by almost 800 delegates and passed with an overwhelming majority of 70.1%

Our parent union has a membership body of 115,000 and an annual budget of $58M. Until this past Friday, the MTA has represented union members in any workplace related legal case, but has not defended workers whose immigration status is threatened for exercising their academic freedoms. The policy change that we proposed, and that MTA delegates passed, commits the MTA to extending legal representation for any member, K-12 or higher ed, threatened with deportation or detention for teaching, writing, speaking or protesting a subject that the billionaire’s league wishes to censor. It also requires the MTA to use its heft and the size of its membership body to negotiate discounted rates for a range of immigration services on behalf of members. 

The Federal Government is enacting what a US District Judge described as an “ideological-deportation policy targeting protected political speech, and a more informal campaign of censorship through threats.” A Brown University Professor was deported from Logan Airport despite having a valid work visa and a tenured position; Badar Khan Suri, a professor and postdoctoral scholar on religion and peace studies from Georgetown University, and Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student and SEIU union member have been detained and targeted for deportation; and Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and green card holder, is under deportation orders. These educators have been targeted for their support of Palestine, student rights to protest, and ethical investment policies. Other patterns of detention and refusal of entry by US Customs and Border Protection officers are based on scrutiny of travelers’ personal devices, seriously endangering those visa and green card holders who work on race, vaccines, gender and sexuality, climate change, immigration or any other subject of inquiry that the federal government is opposed to. Recent cancellations of undergraduate and graduate student visas for traffic violations and other minor charges indicate an ever increasing scope of attack on non-citizens. The threat to our members is substantial: the Institute for Immigration Research estimates that 11% of educators across the country are foreign born and only half of them are naturalized US citizens. These numbers indicate how many of our members are immigrants and that roughly 5-6% of our members are currently vulnerable to being targeted on the basis of their immigration status

The threats foreign-born educators face today are immediate and terrifying, but they are not new. Immigrant educators have faced threats of detention, deportation, and denaturalization for exercising their academic freedoms throughout US history. This has been true in acute moments of state repression, including the 1919 red scare, the McCarthy era, and the period after 9/11, but legal threats have also been used to silence foreign-born educators–K-12 as well as higher ed–for taking part in anti-war struggles, civil rights movements, and, of course, for union organizing. Eruptions of nativism and fascism may appear episodically in US history – or so we hope – but the need to vigorously protect our immigrant members is, and has been, constant. We are now poised at the most dangerous moment in the last half century and a major part of the threat is experienced by immigrants.

Our union must protect us because we know our bosses will not. Even where administrators are not actively complicit in targeting foreign-born educators – as we all have seen happen in recent months – immigration law is, and has historically been, a tool of labor control. It is in the boss’ interest to use it this way, and this is particularly true when immigrant workers organize. When International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) president Harry Bridges was threatened with deportation during the 1930s, dockworkers understood that this was a strategy to break their union. The same is true in higher education today. 

As a union that bargains for the common good, the FSU and the MTA know our immigrant educators are intimately connected to immigrant communities. When foreign-born educators can speak up for their students and families in our schools and in our locals without fear, we are all stronger. This is why we proposed an amendment to the MTA’s legal services policy that allows the MTA to provide legal representation for members threatened with deportation or detention for exercising their academic freedoms. 

In passing this amendment, the members of the MTA have moved our union to the forefront of the struggle for freedoms and protections for international educators. Defending the rights of foreign-born educators protects our whole union and builds our wider movement to defend public education. 

Sana Haroon, Professor, History, FSU Vice President

Rania Said, Assistant Professor, Modern Languages, Literature, and Cultures, FSU Executive Committee

Nick Juravich, Assistant Professor, History

Chris Fung, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology

Alejandro Reuss, Lecturer, Labor Resource Center, FSU Executive Committee

Daniela Balanzategui, Assistant Professor, Anthropology