Selling crab meat has been the livelihood of Aubrey Vincent's family since at least the mid-1980s, when her father bought Lindy's Seafood on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
It's a business that relies on the federal H-2B visa program, through which migrant workers — chiefly from Mexico — are hired to pick meat out of the indigenous crustaceans from the start of the spring through the autumn.
“The program essentially has kept the Maryland crab meat industry alive,” Vincent, the sales manager at Lindy's, told the Washington Examiner. For roughly 24 years, Vincent said, Lindy's had little trouble securing the 105 visas it needs.
Then came 2018, when the Trump administration distributed visas through a lottery rather than according to the order of requests, and Lindy's and several of the crab plants on the Eastern Shore were unable to get their share of the 500 seasonal workers the industry typically requires.
The lottery compounded the problems from a decision by Congress two years earlier to let lapse a rule allowing workers from previous years return without counting toward a cap of 66,000 on new visas, which left the supply far short of demand from businesses.
As a result, Vincent's Dorchester County operation lost six months of work and 50% of its sales revenue. It wasn’t until October, as the season neared its end, that she was able to secure 75 H-2B visas after the government allotted additional ones.
If the crab house had lost the visas it needed this year, "I'm not sure we would've been able to stay in business," said Vincent, who's elated by the Trump administration's decision to allocate 30,000 more visas.
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5 comments:
We shouldn't have to bring foreigners in to do ANY job cheaper than Americans. If Ford was bringing in Mexicans on Visas to build cars people would be raising hell. Either charge more for the product or Lindy's will have to get by with less profit like the rest of us do. If no one wants to do the job or no one wants to pay the cost of Americans doing the job then leave the crabs in the bay.
He did the Irish.
Actually, I think the summer worker program works very well. We get motivated workers that will take a wage that allows crab meat to be sold at a price people will pay (and even then it's pretty high..), and then they go home like they are supposed to.
Would you want to pick tomatoes? I couldn't do it. Bent over all day, picking tomatoes or melons or green beans. I'm pretty glad we can get someone that can do it.
You would pick tomatoes or crab 8f you weren't spoiled. Those who get welfare checks should be required to work even 8f it is picking crap. That's what is wrong with America. We give lazy people a check each month for doing nothing. Why do you think we have a crises at the border - they want in for free stuff. Do coal miners say " I don't want to get my hands dirty so I won't work in the mines". No they don't. I am sick and tired going into a store and finding the checkout clerk is
from another country - WTH. So the people on the Eastern Shore are too lazy to pick crabs - you deserve Hogan.
why aren't we importing all those mexicans to be college professors? I'm sure they would work for less?
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