For the first time in more than a decade, many Maryland businesses are
warning that there won’t be anyone to pick the crabs, shuck the oysters or
trim the hedges.
Thousands of temporary workers essential to keeping many summer industries
humming will not be allowed into the country this year to take their regular
jobs. They are being blocked by a cap on the number of foreign seasonal
workers.
For the first time since the seasonal worker visa program was established
in 1990, the nationwide limit of 66,000 workers was reached this month – early
enough to close the door before many seafood processors and landscapers were
allowed to apply.
News of the worker shortage has rippled through the Eastern Shore, home to
many of the state’s seafood processing plants, landscaping businesses and one
remaining cannery.
“We’re kind of dead in the water without those workers. We can’t even
reopen,” said Harry Phillips, owner of Russell Hall Seafood on Hooper’s
Island.
With the days when local women picked crabs long gone in most places, the
processors say they can’t find anyone other than the foreign workers for the
jobs. They can’t afford to raise wages to attract locals because cheaper
imports will undercut their product in the marketplace.
They have already tried to tap into Baltimore’s unemployed population. One
summer they ran a worker bus between Baltimore and Cambridge. Most days, the
only one on it was the driver.
Phillips, a former waterman, bought his 65-year-old seafood business in
1992 – about the time the seafood industry began using the seasonal worker
visa, known as the H-2B. The business had been closed for eight years before
then, he said, because the previous owner couldn’t find anyone to pick the
crabs.
Phillips usually hires 50 H-2B workers for his business, and they start
around March 30. They are almost all women from Mexico, and most come back
year after year.
Bill Seiling, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries
Association, said that has been the case with most of the employers. The
workers remain loyal, he said, because they earn good money – up to $200 a day
for the fastest crab pickers – and have decent housing provided by the
employers for reasonable rents. Workers are paid by the pound of meat they
pick, Seiling said, and all pay Social Security, insurance and income tax.
This year, Seiling said, only four of the 25 plants that count on hiring
about 1,000 foreign seafood workers will be eligible to get them.
When Congress established the program 15 years ago as an answer to a
shortage of seasonal workers in non-agricultural industries, lawmakers imposed
several restrictions. First, they set the 66,000-worker cap nationwide to
ensure the program wouldn’t displace American workers. Second, they said
businesses could apply no sooner than 120 days before the workers were needed.
Those restrictions posed no hint of difficulties until last year, when the
cap was reached in March. Though processors were able to get their workers,
they foresaw problems. Last year was the first the cap had been reached, said
Chris Bentley, spokesman for U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, which is
under the Department of Homeland Security.
On Jan. 4, Bentley’s office announced the 2005 cap had been met and no more
applications would be accepted.
The agency had already accepted more than 100,000 applications, figuring
that it would reject about a third of those. An application is no guarantee
that a business will get the workers – first, the Department of Labor must
certify that the business tried to find local workers for the jobs, then the
Department of Homeland Security must make sure the business is eligible under
requirements. Finally, the State Department handles the visas.
In addition to the seafood and landscaping businesses, Bentley said, the
most common H-2B requesters are industries involved in logging, fish
processing, resort management and food service. But he doesn’t know why
businesses are asking for more H-2B workers.
“We can attest to the fact that the demand is much greater,” he said.
“What’s driving the demand, we don’t know.”
He added that the department’s hands are tied regarding the cap. “There
isn’t anything now, as the law was written, that can be done,” Bentley said.
Three members of Maryland’s congressional delegation are trying to do
something. Last year, Democratic Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski introduced
legislation to raise the cap. That bill never came up for a vote, in part
because it became mired in a larger debate about immigration reform. Several
senators, among them Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, have said
they’re worried that these large influxes of labor keep American wages low.
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Other critics, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform,
say the industry could attract more domestic workers simply by offering better
pay.
“What we’re really doing with these foreign workers is exploiting them,”
said Jack Martin, a spokesman for the federation. “Really, what is happening
is that these workers are practically indentured.”
Those with constituents relying on the H-2B program are trying to separate
the immediate worker need from the larger immigration debate. This year,
Mikulski is working with a bipartisan panel of senators from other states that
rely on the H-2B program. Staffers for Democratic Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes say
they’re also involved in the issue.
Republican Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest joined Mikulski to support a proposal
exempting some foreign workers from the cap. The bill, which hasn’t been
filed, would let workers who have held jobs with American companies in the
past two or three years return to these jobs.
That’s not a problem for H-2B loyalists like Ned Brooks, who runs Relms
Landscaping in Annapolis. He has used the same 15 or so workers all four of
his years with the program.
“The door’s been summarily slammed in our face,” he said. “With this cap,
companies on the West Coast have a decided advantage over us because they
start the process earlier.”
Jay Friel, who runs his family’s 100-year-old cannery in Queen Anne’s
County, the last such operation on the Eastern Shore, says the visa program
has helped stabilize his local work force of 75 full-time employees. Thanks to
the program, many local workers can take on higher-paying supervisory
positions while temporary workers handle lower-skilled jobs.
“This program works; it’s a no-brainer,” Friel said. “It’s not really an
immigration issue; it’s a jobs issue, and it saves American jobs.”
The Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association has lobbied Congress
since March to let more workers. Seiling said they’re now considering other
more attention-grabbing measures – like dumping crab shells on the U.S.
Capitol steps.
“We have beat all the bushes we’re supposed to beat, and nothing has
happened,” he said.
Several times this month, Harry Phillips has fielded calls from his workers
in Mexico asking when they can return to work. Having to deliver the bad news
is all the more difficult for Phillips because his application arrived at the
Department of Homeland Security by overnight mail on Jan. 4 – hours after the
cap was reached.
Even those who have their workers worry about what’s to come. Jack Brooks,
whose family runs J.M. Clayton Seafood in Cambridge, filed his visa request in
time, but he wonders about 2006. In addition to facing competition for H-2B
workers, seafood brokers fear losing out to cheaper imports from Asia, South
America and Central America.
“Without these workers, we have a way of life around the bay that is going
to disappear,” Brooks said. “The way things stand now, we could see 70 percent
or 80 percent of Maryland crab meat vanish this year. It would change
everything – and change it for good.”