Maryland's Crab Country: Not Enough Visas, Not Enough Workers

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

FISHING CREEK, Md.—Music blared as 21 Mexican women methodically cracked open steamed crabs piled high inside a cool, bright room. They picked out the meat and packed it into 1-pound containers that their employer, G.W. Hall & Sons, ships to wholesalers in the mid-Atlantic and as far away as Canada.

A half-mile down Old House Point Road, the picking room at a competing company, Russell Hall Seafood, was silent, no workers to be seen. Bare metal tables, normally heaped with crabs this time of year, gleamed.

The difference: one firm won the visa lottery, and the other lost.

This year, for the first time, demand for the low-skilled, seasonal H-2B visas was so high that the U.S. government awarded them by lottery. The result is uncertainty for businesses such as crab processors in this remote corner of Maryland’s Eastern Shore that have relied on the program for years.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the lottery was only fair, given the demand. By law 66,000 H-2B visas are available each year, divided between winter and summer seasons. For this summer season, businesses filed requests for more than 81,000 workers on Jan. 1, the first day possible, a record.

The guest-worker visas are coveted by landscapers, tourist businesses and seafood processors, especially with the U.S. unemployment rate at a 17-year low.

Opponents of the visa program, including some in the Trump administration, say businesses should try harder to hire locally and raise wages if necessary. As a candidate, President Donald Trump pledged to protect American workers from foreign competition.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/marylands-crab-country-not-enough-visas-not-enough-workers/ar-AAx6rS3?li=BBnb7Kz

The last paragraph proves that when it comes to business Trump doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

[lapfog_1]

1. so how does a business that loses the lottery

compete with the winners in the same industry?

To get those local workers they have to pay competitive wages to other jobs in the area... whereas the lottery winners can keep paying below market wages to the guest workers because those guest workers have few other options (stay home or get a low paying job in the US).

I fail to understand even the Trumpian logic here.

[GusBob]

2. Request for mothers day: crab cake

Price for 8 Oz of blue crab meat from the Pkilipinnes; 19.99. The usual domestic product not in store

Recipe falls for a lb, lol

These crabbers and all their associates are all proud MAGA people, so tough titty for them

As a bonus though, the crab populations should flourish

[MineralMan]

3. They're getting what they voted for, it seems.

That's happening a lot these days. As for hiring local workers, that's an iffy proposition, regardless of the pay. Jobs like that are tedious, mind-numbing and repetitive. Packing crab meat stinks, too. It makes the workers stink. The job stinks.

They can get willing workers, but not local workers. They take other kinds of jobs these days, or work a while and take unemployment. Low paying, crappy jobs that are tedious are difficult jobs to find workers to do.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

4. Didn't Hillary carry Maryland?

Guess I'm not seeing how they voted for this.

[MineralMan]

5. Did Trump get no votes in Maryland?

Even from crab fishermen? I doubt that is the case.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

7. So have you polled the crab fisherman?

How do you know how they voted?

[MineralMan]

8. Have you?

[procon]

6. Sounds suspiciously like the government is picking winners losers.

Sure, sure its a lottery... luck of the draw, very fair, too bad if you lose. Except that the government tilts the scales and the winner takes an unfair advantage over all the other losers. The solution would be to have a comprehensive immigration policy that allowed for seasonal workers with protections for foreign and domestic laborers.