Foreign Workers

I REMEMBER the grim searches for work in the summers after my sophomore and junior years of high school in the late 1980s. I went from store to store in my neighborhood filling out applications. I never got a single call. Things haven't changed much. The teen unemployment rate is 17.2 percent, compared with 5.6 percent for the whole population. More than 1.2 million teens were actively seeking employment in May, and about 5.5 million people between the ages of 16 and 24 aren't working, aren't in the military or aren't in school, according Paul Harrington, a Northeastern University labor economist.

It is good news Maryland's population has grown by 480,000 ( "Maryland population grows by 480,000," Dec. 22). That's a sizeable jump and will mean more taxes for the state, more consumers to purchase goods and services and increased funding to our pension programs. However, there was no mention as to the legal status of the expanding Hispanic population. The Latinos make up about 7 percent of Maryland's population and now account for 40 percent of the state's growth since the last census was taken.

Maryland seafood processors and advocates for the Hispanic community are working together to solve a labor shortage that could cripple the summer crab-picking season. The seafood processors learned last month that most of the temporary workers who have picked crabs and shucked oysters for more than a decade would not be able to return to their seasonal jobs this year. The workers are being denied entry because of a nationwide limit that Congress established for the number of seasonal working permits, known as H-2B visas.

With only a few months until summer, employers and legislators in Maryland and elsewhere are scrambling to avert what they say could be a labor crisis for the seafood, landscaping and tourism industries. The problem stems from a limit on how many seasonal workers are allowed into the United States under a federal visa known as H2B. The program lets 66,000 workers into the country each year for temporary jobs in non-agricultural industries. Though many more foreign workers enter the country under different visa categories - including students, computer specialists, surgeons and fruit pickers - it is the H2B program that has left many East Coast businesses wondering whether they will survive the coming season.

WASHINGTON - A vote could come as early as today on an amendment offered by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski to temporarily expand the number of workers allowed to come to the United States and take seasonal jobs picking crabs, shucking oysters or mowing lawns. Without help from Congress, businesses that hire these workers could find themselves drastically short of people. "This is one of the few immigration programs that have really worked to keep companies in business and yet control our borders," the Maryland Democrat said yesterday.

With unemployment rising, hundreds of thousands of American families facing foreclosures on their homes, and wages flat-lining (especially for workers without college degrees), the nation needs ... more workers who are willing to accept low wages and are less likely to organize or otherwise assert their rights. That's what a well-funded business coalition, with well-connected lobbyists, is telling Congress. Many members of the U.S. House and Senate - including Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland - are listening attentively and getting ready to give these low-wage employers just what they want.

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.

American tax dollars and the wartime needs of the U.S. military are fueling an illicit pipeline of cheap foreign labor into Iraq, mainly impoverished Asians who often are deceived, exploited and put in harm's way with little protection. The U.S. has long condemned the practices that characterize this human trade as it operates elsewhere in the Middle East. Yet this very system is part of the privatization of the American war effort and is central to the operations of Halliburton subsidiary KBR, the U.S. military's biggest private contractor in Iraq.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's long journey to immigration reform comes to a crucial test today. When he entered the White House in January 2001, Bush declared his intention to forge a tighter relationship with the rest of the Americas. As Texas governor, he had privately repudiated the anti-illegal-immigrant politics of fellow Republican Gov. Pete Wilson of California. He joined with his friend, Mexican President Vicente Fox, in promoting plans for providing visas to Mexican laborers.

WASHINGTON -- The vast majority of immigrants to the United States don't arrive through seaports. But the Dubai ports debacle, now an emblem of economic nationalism, has a lot in common with the sorts of arguments used against immigration. Like those who opposed the Dubai deal, foes of foreign workers, whether low-skilled guest workers or high-skilled techies, miss a central point. The U.S. isn't an economic bubble. Snapping out of the protectionist mood and playing by the rules of open markets are both good and necessary.