Foreign teacher fights firing
Romanian
COURTESY OF THE LIVINGSTONS
Allen and Mihaela Livingston at their wedding in Romania on July 22, 2006
Romanian exchange teacher Mihaela Sinzianu Livingston found love, got married and decided to stay in America.
And she lost her job because of it, she alleges in a lawsuit.
Now, Livingston is suing FACES, a Columbia-based academic and cultural teaching exchange program — even though she signed a contract that bans participants from trying to remain in the United States and requires them to return home to teach for at least two years.
William Frick, a Winnsboro attorney representing Livingston, said the contract is “unenforceable” and “unconscionable.”
But FACES attorney Rebecca Fulmer said the requirements are vital if the program is to work as a true cultural exchange.
She said, in the 2005-06 school year, some 66 percent to 75 percent of third-year teachers in FACES sought waivers to stay in the United States.
“What happens is that the exchange program becomes converted into an immigration program,” she said, “and that’s the danger.”
Livingston had been teaching for two years in the Fairfield County School District, where she met Allen Livingston. They married in July 2006.
She was fired that December, after she filed for permanent residence here. As part of the contract she signed, she also is banned from teaching in South Carolina for two years.
“Have you ever heard about never-ending happiness?” the 32-year-old said in a written statement. “If there is, it does not happen to us.”
There are 364 foreign teachers on visitor visas in South Carolina.
Livingston applied for a “no objection” waiver to stay in the United States, Frick said. That waiver is granted by the home country, in her case Romania, which states it has no problem with a citizen seeking residence elsewhere.
Livingston understands she breached the contract, Frick said, but added she did not understand the implications of signing it.
Prohibiting her from teaching in the state for two years is unfair and overly broad, Frick said, because in part it allows a private business to take away basic human rights.
That isn’t what the United States should be about, said her 43-year-old husband, Allen Livingston.
“It’s just not fair what’s happened to us,” he said.
“I fell in love. What about my rights? Is my wife supposed to go home and be away from me for two years?”
Reach Woodson at (803) 771-8692.