WASHINGTON -- With Congress at an impasse over visas for seasonal laborers, the owners of Eastern Shore businesses that have counted on foreign workers to pick crabs, wash dishes and can corn are bracing for a difficult summer ahead - with consequences that they warn will spread throughout the state economy.
The J.M. Clayton Seafood Co. in Cambridge, the oldest crab-picking house on the Eastern Shore, has pushed opening day back a month. Phillips Crab House in Ocean City, which ordinarily opens Palm Sunday to take advantage of the Easter Week crowds, remains shuttered until April.
The owner of S.E.W. Friel in Queenstown, the last cannery on the Shore, doesn't want to talk about how he will cope without the 50 foreigners he says he needs to fill out his labor force.
"We've got a couple of hundred farmers that are dependent upon us to run," said Jay Friel III. "We've got can manufacturers, truckers, haulers, box people. I can't even contemplate not getting the workers," he said. "It's not an option. Congress has to pass this."
Lawmakers remain deadlocked over the H2B visa program, which brings foreigners to the United States to work in temporary, low-paying and often grueling jobs that business owners say Americans won't take. The workers are required to leave the country when their visas expire.
The federal government caps the program at 66,000 visas annually - a quota that was reached this year on Jan. 2, before many Maryland businesses were permitted to apply.
During the previous three years, employers were allowed to work around that limit by bringing back workers from past seasons. Under an exemption introduced by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, to help Eastern Shore businesses, those employees - more than 69,000 nationwide last year - were not counted against the cap.
But the so-called returning worker exemption expired in September. And while Mikulski was able to shepherd an extension through the Senate, it has been blocked in the House by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The 21-Democrat bloc, frustrated by the collapse last year of a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws, opposes what members describe as "piecemeal" efforts that they fear would blunt the impetus for the broader legislation they seek.
