"This is about keeping the Maryland seafood industry afloat," she aid.
In the past, the returning worker exemption has won bipartisan support in Congress. But efforts to extend it last year were blocked in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and opponents have not withdrawn their objections.
Robin Hall says the clock is ticking.
"The whole industry's going to be gone," said Hall, who used 30 guest workers last year at the G.W. Hall & Son picking house. "We need help to save this way of life."
In their inability to get foreign workers this year, the processors of Hoopers Island say they fell victim to a bureaucracy that never gave them a chance.
Congress makes 66,000 H2B visas available nationwide each year, but businesses may not apply until 120 days before the workers will need them. The crab season in Maryland begins April 1, which puts the processors behind an ever-growing number of landscapers, building contractors and others that employ foreign workers.
The application process, which involves the state and federal departments of labor, the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service and the State Department, can take months. This year, only Lindy's Seafood Inc. was able to make it through before the visa cap was reached, according to the other processors. A call to Lindy's, in the Dorchester County town of Woolford, was not returned.
Critics of the H2B visas say the foreigners, who come almost exclusively from developing countries, depress wages for local workers. They say the businesses that use them could find Americans to do the work if they offered better pay.
"Employers are, in effect, using the program simply to have a low-wage work force," said Jack Martin of the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington.
On Hoopers Island, a spit of land between the Honga River and the Chesapeake Bay that is a two-hour drive from Baltimore, the processors say that their principal hiring challenges have been the small local population and an inability to coax Americans to relocate here for seasonal jobs.
Before they may participate in the H2B program, employers are required to advertise for local workers. They must pay the foreigners a prevailing wage - now $6.17 an hour for crab pickers. The foreigners must leave the United States at the end of the season.
