The Clark County School District has hired 51 Filipino teachers in a recent, well-publicized example of an employer turning to foreign workers.

The district needs teachers trained in math and special education, and the Filipino educators have been hired under a J-1 exchange visitor visa to work for the school district for three years. The teachers will be paid what others are paid.

"Every year we continue to grow and every year we start the school year without meeting all the needs we have," Jo Anne Schlekewy, director of licensed personnel recruiting for the Clark County School District, said. "We've been all over the U.S. recruiting; we're still recruiting daily right now. I think (there's) a shortage throughout the U.S."

She said any foreign applicants the school district hires must have credentials that are equal to a degree in education and they must have three years' teaching experience.

Schlekewy said the process of hiring foreign teachers is complex. She said that school district representatives began working to hire them in February and that the district used an international staffing agency. However, she said, the payoff is worth the effort.

"To me, personally, if I were a parent with a child in school right now I would feel more comfortable with a person that is trained," she said, adding that the alternative is to hire substitute teachers. "That's what we're going to have to do is put substitutes in the 200 slots that are open and many of them are not qualified in the area they're going to be working in."

Some worker advocates disagree with the assessment that companies need workers so badly they're turning to foreign-born workers. Jane McAlevey, executive director of the Service Employees International Union Local 1107, said every hospital in the Las Vegas Valley hires foreign nurses. However, some hospitals have more aggressive recruiting campaigns for foreign workers than others.

"There was a period of time in America where the Irish nurses were hot 10 years ago," she said. "We bled Ireland of as many nurses as we could, then about five years ago we began to import huge numbers of Filipino nurses. Now the hot country for American hospitals to go raid is India."

McAlevey said the union doesn't believe there is a shortage of hospital nurses, just that many of them are deciding to leave hospital duty due to "deplorable conditions."

"There are 2,000 more licensed nurses than there are nurses willing to work at the hospital bedside," she said. "The industry takes the cheap-shot approach, gets on airplanes, pays a ton of money to recruiters, and goes and steals desperately needed health care providers from countries that need them."

McAlevey added that the union isn't anti-immigration.

"We're fine with immigrant workers, we embrace immigrant workers," McAlevey said. "What we don't endorse are abysmal conditions in Vegas hospitals that make it so that nurses in America don't want to work in them."

Cheryl Persinger, a spokeswoman for University Medical Center, declined to comment on McAlevey's stark assessment of hospital working conditions. She said UMC does have shortages of nurses, pharmacists, respiratory therapists and radiology technology specialists. However, she said, the hospital doesn't recruit them in their home countries.

"We certainly hire workers who are foreign-born," she said. "We don't ourselves go out and have formal campaigns to hire those workers -- some of the other hospitals in town do. One-third of our nursing workforce is Filipino. They have to get here themselves and provide us with work visas to show they're legally allowed to work here and we treat them as any other employee."

She said the hospital has programs in place to try and recruit Americans to work in the health care industry.

Many employers use H-1B visas, a type of visa used by American companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers that have at least a bachelor's degree or the equivalent. The visa is for three years and can be renewed once, with some exceptions. The H-1B visa workers must be paid the prevailing wage.

Those who work under H-1B visas are often employed in high-tech fields like information technology, but they also work in a variety of other industries such as the sciences, medicine, engineering, education, entertainment and hospitality.

H-2B visas are for temporary or seasonal non-agricultural jobs that require less skills than H-1B visas. H-2B visas are most used in areas of the country with seasonal economies, however they aren't used as much in Southern Nevada because of the area's year-round economy, industry officials say.

Cass Palmer, vice president of human resources for Boyd Gaming Corp., said that the company hires foreign-born workers through H-1B and H-2B visa programs but that his staff doesn't recruit in foreign workers' home countries.

When foreigners do come looking for jobs, the company is willing to hire them, Palmer said. He also said that once one foreign person comes to work in the United States it's easier for their friends and family to come over on their own. He said they often encourage others to come over.

"The needs are to find the right person with the right service mentality that will come and stay with us and will grow with us," Palmer said. "With all the boom going on in the Vegas market we can't find good individuals to come and stay with us. We're always looking outside Las Vegas both nationally and internationally."

He said the company uses more H-1B visas than the H-2B's. Palmer said the company employs workers on H-1B visas in positions in marketing, entertainment, culinary arts and information technology, but noted that the process of obtaining workers through such visas is costly and time-consuming.

"It's somewhat expensive for the company to go through the process of obtaining the H-1B," Palmer said. "It's a few thousand bucks, but if you can find the right person, it's worth it. With any government application process it can stretch out months, up to a year. We have to plan for our needs."

He said that in general most foreign workers are willing to work hard at jobs that some consider to be menial work, such as housekeeping jobs, which are positions that the company needs to fill the most.

"No question, it's the service aspect," Palmer said. "The individuals understand the word service and understand the work ethic and want to do a good job," Palmer said. "I'm not saying American workers don't do a good job, but (foreign workers) understand working to serve other individuals -- our guests -- is a highly respected position."

Palmer said many foreign workers come over as refugees or are seeking asylum through agencies like Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada.

Pam Bridges, employment supervisor for the agency's Migration and Refugee Services program, said employers in the Las Vegas Valley have such a great demand for workers that Catholic Charities can't keep up. The agency obtained 1,000 jobs for 800 clients last year. She said there was some overlap because some of those workers were able to get more than one job.

"We don't have enough clients," Bridges said. "Most of our clients are anxious to work. It's going to be their very first job in this country. They know they need to work so they have to start somewhere. Our clients are willing to take any job -- they'll start at the bottom and work their way up."

Although employers say they need foreign workers, there are limits to how many can legally work in the country. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced earlier this month that the congressionally mandated 65,000 cap on H-1B visas was reached for fiscal year 2006, which begins Oct. 1.

Immigration lawyers and employers say the caps hinder the ability of American companies to meet their hiring needs. That's particularly so in the Las Vegas Valley where the unemployment rate is 4 percent, according to the latest Nevada Department of Employment, Training & Rehabilitation numbers.

Peter Ashman, immediate past chairman of the Nevada Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said U.S. labor laws are in need of a makeover because they don't realistically address the issue of immigration or guest worker programs.

"The problem here is the policy and the laws don't reflect each other," Ashman said. "The policy should be as long as there are job openings and you need someone you should be able to get people."

He said visa caps and other limits on foreign workers reduce the number of qualified workers companies can attract, and they motivate companies to outsource.

"When 9/11 happened and they imposed these caps, a lot of companies said, 'We will set up shop in India (rather) than bringing them here to California,' " Ashman said. "There we'll save more money because we (Congress) capped the H-1B numbers.' We created this situation where there's an incentive to outsource these jobs. We're not only not getting these people in, but they're (the companies) still hiring them, but they're hiring them for a fraction of the wage they would have here."

Currently there are two proposals for immigration reform pending in Congress.

One is the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005, which is sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. Their bill allows for guest workers to come and allows them a way to earn residency.

The other bill is called the Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act of 2005, which is sponsored by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. That bill strengthens border enforcement and employer accountability for illegal hiring. "People rightfully ask: If the current laws at the border and at the workplace are not being enforced, why should we believe new laws will be?" Sen. Kyl asked in a press release about the bill. "Our bill answers that question by putting in place both stringent legal requirements and the assets necessary to ensure that we can control the border and prevent illegal hiring in the United States."

Ashman said the McCain-Kennedy legislation more adequately addresses the issue of immigration by allowing guest workers to come into the country and possibly earn their way to legal residency and then citizenship. The Cornyn-Kyl bill won't encourage illegal immigrants to come forward, it will simply encourage them to remain anonymous, he said.

Ashman said that because employment needs are so great and because the immigration laws aren't adequate, many foreign workers in Southern Nevada find themselves working here illegally, which he said the immigration laws tacitly support.

"The overwhelming majority of noncitizen, nonpermanent workers are undocumented workers," he said.

Alana Roberts covers courts and labor relations for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached by e-mail at alanar@lasvegassun.com or at (702) 259-4059.