A special visa program that has supplied Maryland's seafood industry with foreign workers is about to expire, and owners of crab-picking houses on the Eastern Shore say their livelihood is once again in jeopardy.
The law that extended the H2B visa program, which has brought workers from Mexico and other countries to the Shore during the past decade, is set to expire tomorrow. While the thousands of workers already in Maryland will be able to stay until their seasonal jobs end in a month or two, they have no guarantee they'll be able to come back next year.
And if the workers don't return, their employers say, the packing houses would have to shut down. That could spread economic hardship throughout the entire Shore, with plenty of local crabbers, drivers and packers losing their jobs, too.
"It's simple - either we get our workers or we're out of business," said processor Harry Phillips, who owns Russell Hall Seafood on Hoopers Island. "If we're out of business, you're going to see watermen out of business, too."
Since 1990, the H2B program has allowed foreign workers into the country on a temporary visa that allows them to work in seasonal industries, such as landscaping, fisheries and hotels. For most of those years, the program worked smoothly - workers were happy to come because they made far more than what they could earn at home, and employers were happy to have them as it became increasingly difficult to find American workers for the jobs.
But the program appeared to be heading for trouble in 2004, when the national cap of 66,000 workers was reached in March. Employers can't apply for the visas any earlier than 120 days before they need their workers. Most seafood processors - who use the workers to pick the meat from steamed crabs, then put it in small plastic tubs - got their workers that year, but several other industries that have later starts were shut out.
Then, in 2005, the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, which is now under the Department of Homeland Security, announced that the cap had been filled by January 4 - so early that most of Maryland's seafood processors weren't even allowed to apply yet. Their season runs from about April to Thanksgiving.
The processors went to Capitol Hill, where they had found an ally in U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski. The Maryland Democrat pushed for an expansion to the H2B limits, but the issue kept getting mired in the larger national debate on immigration.
