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February 5, 2023

The Talbot Spy

The nonprofit e-newspaper for the Talbot County Community

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Less Seasonal Help, Virus Deliver One-Two Punch to Bay’s Blue Crab Industry

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Crab season is off to a slow and foreboding start around the Chesapeake Bay, with many crabmeat processors crippled by an inability to import seasonal workers and by watermen worried they’ll be unable to sell all they can catch as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Chilly, windy weather limited commercial harvests of blue crabs through much of April, the first full month of the season. Warming spring weather usually brings better fortunes, but those in the business of catching or picking crabs say they fear for their livelihoods amid the double whammy that’s hit the Bay’s most valuable fishery.

“It’s kind of a really scary situation,” said Bill Sieling, executive vice president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, which represents Maryland companies. “It just doesn’t look good.”

Many of the crabmeat processing businesses around the Bay are short-handed because they failed to get federal approval to bring in as many foreign workers as they have in previous years.

The Department of Homeland Security held a lottery in January to distribute a reduced pool of 33,000 H-2B visas nationwide to all of the landscaping, construction and other businesses seeking to bring in seasonal labor, mainly from Mexico and Central America. Under pressure, the department announced in March it would hand out another 35,000 visas, but shelved that in early April amid the coronavirus pandemic.

As a result, only three of Maryland’s nine “picking houses,” as the crab processors are known, received any visas in the initial drawing. After missing out on the lottery, Lindy’s Seafood on Hoopers Island was looking at limping along with a half-dozen local workers.

“We could sell more product, we just can’t produce it,” said sales manager Aubrey Vincent.

Then, in late April, she said she got federal approval to bring back 61 workers who’d picked crabmeat at the plant last fall.

“It’s not all of my people,” she said, noting that the plant typically hires more than 100 seasonal workers. Still, she said, “it’s better than no people.”

The luck was as bad or worse in Virginia, where Graham & Rollins Inc., the biggest crabmeat processor in the state and one of the largest on the East Coast, has been idled after coming up snake-eyes in the visa lottery. The company, a fixture on the Hampton waterfront for nearly 80 years, had asked for 85 visas.

“Without workers, we’re looking at closure,” said Johnny Graham. “The plant’s been mothballed, the power’s pretty much cut off [and] the water supply’s being cut off.”

J. M. Clayton Co. in Cambridge was among the lucky ones. Co-owner Jack Brooks said the company got its request granted via the lottery for about 60 visas.

But then coronavirus intervened. Brooks said that with restaurants shut down and many people losing jobs, the demand for crabmeat is off, and he’s not sure when or if it will come back. So, the company has arranged to bring in “a few more than 20” workers for now.

“We’re looking at probably 30–45% capacity at best,” Brooks said.

Though unable to process much crabmeat, processors say they’re still able to sell live or steamed crabs. There appears to be a robust demand for the limited supply available in this slow-starting season.

Graham said the retail seafood store operated by his company has been selling crabs for carryout like it was the 4th of July, the traditional peak of demand for steamed crabs.

Debbie Fitzhugh sells fresh crab meat at a new service window at the J. M. Clayton Co. in Cambridge. Photo by Dave Harp/Bay Journal News Service

J. M. Clayton also has seen an uptick in retail crab sales, Brooks said. In response, the company has set up a makeshift drive-up window where customers can place orders and pick them up.

“People blow a horn, we go to the window and talk to them,” he said. That way, he explained, “people don’t walk in like they used to” and risk getting or spreading coronavirus.

Processors said they’re taking steps to try to keep their workers healthy. Brooks said Clayton is limiting the workforce in the picking room so workers are spaced 6 feet apart and wearing masks.

Watermen aren’t as worried about social distancing but they do wonder if they’ll be able to sell their catch when warmer weather usually brings more crabs into their boats.

“There haven’t been many crabs so far,” said Jeff Harrison, president of the Talbot Watermen Association. But demand is off, with restaurants closed and many markets not buying much seafood.

“Right now,” he added, “there really isn’t a problem selling them.”

Harrison said he’s worried about how long the coronavirus shutdowns are going to last. They already cut short what had turned out to be a good wild oyster harvest, he said. Now, even if restaurants and other businesses start to reopen in the coming month, he foresees a season where watermen won’t earn as much for what they catch — and feel lucky just to be able to sell it at all.

Already, the dockside price has been about 30% or more below what it was at the start of the season last year, Harrison said. Meanwhile, he noted, the price of razor clams used as bait has gone up.

The $2 trillion in COVID-19 economic relief passed by Congress in late March included $300 million for the seafood industry. But that’s to be distributed nationwide, and industry officials say it’s far from enough to keep everyone afloat. Just in Virginia alone, losses to all commercial fisheries are estimated to range from $53 million to $68 million, according to data compiled by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

“Even if it lasts another month, it’s still going to be a mess,” Harrison said. “And if it goes two months, we’re done.”

Amid news reports that air and water quality have improved as a result of so many businesses closed and people ordered to stay home, Harrison said the effort to halt the spread of coronavirus is probably helping the Bay. But, he added, it’s “not the way we wanted it to happen.”

By Timothy B. Wheeler

Seafood Industry Visa Fix Collides with Coronavirus

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With the aid of lawmakers, seafood businesses in Maryland, Virginia, Alaska and North Carolina last month won federal approval of an additional 35,000 visas for non-immigrant workers, but the timing couldn’t have been worse.

Within days, the coronavirus pandemic began shutting down businesses, including restaurants and retail outlets the seafood industry supplies.

Some seafood operations let employees go, while others have hired fewer people than they would in a more typical season.

John Martin, owner of the Martin Fish Co. in Ocean City, Maryland, told Capital News Service that a large percentage of the firm’s business is in the retail sector, including market and restaurant sales. Due to the virus, Martin Fish has been unable to open its retail store.

“We are now in the process of figuring out how to open with the safety of our workers and our customers in mind,” Martin said. “Currently, we have had to lay off a significant number of employees that are directly relating to those end-user groups.”

He added that this has been a lesson for his company: within weeks a global issue can affect the world food markets and he needs to be more prepared for that in the future.

Jack Brooks, president of J.M. Clayton Seafood Co. in Cambridge, Maryland, explained that the seafood industry is a seasonal business and the coronavirus has hit the hardest during the industry’s  prime time.

“We were planning on hiring between 65 to 70 workers for the season, but now that the markets have gone down we hired about 25 people,” Brooks said in an interview with CNS. “We sell our seafood to restaurants and with the restaurants being closed that has really hurt our business. We are taking this pandemic really seriously and are hoping that by next year we will be able to recover from the hard hits we have taken.”

The $2 trillion coronavirus aid package passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump last month includes $300 million for the nation’s fisheries industry.

The Maryland congressional delegation sent a letter on April 13 to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Chris Owen, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, requesting that the aid include companies that process fish products for restaurants and grocery stores.

Fishing and processing seafood is a more than $600 million industry in Maryland.

“A new economic analysis found that Maryland’s oyster aquaculture operations contribute an average of $9 million per year to the state economy and have grown by nearly 25 percent annually since 2012,” the lawmakers wrote. “However, that growth, as well as the mostly small and family-owned businesses that comprise Maryland’s seafood industry, is threatened due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.”

Whenever the seafood industry can go back to relatively normal operations, company officials say the long-term labor problems will remain, despite the visa relief given just before the pandemic struck.

Foreign seasonal workers come to work for the seafood industry each year with the help of the H-2B visas. Such workers are high in demand as these companies would not survive without them.

A study conducted by Maryland’s Best Seafood found that without the additional H-2B visas released each year, seafood processors would lose close to $49 million in sales. Maryland would lose 914 to 1,367 jobs and the overall hit to the state’s economy could reach $150 million.

A letter to the Department of Homeland Security signed by seven senators, including Maryland Democrats Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, called the visas a “critical matter.”

“Local seafood businesses earn their livelihoods based on perishable products and need H-2B workers to harvest and process their respective seafood products so they can sell those products,” the senators wrote. “If these local businesses lose a customer base one year, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to come back into the industry.”

“The DHS grants a maximum of 66,000 visas to foreign nationals each year through the H-2B visa program, which is operated like a lottery,” the lawmakers said. “The workers are spread half-and-half to assist non-agricultural companies across the country between the first and second periods of the year.”

If companies don’t win workers through the lottery, they could be forced to stop business operations unless the DHS grants more visas for seasonal workers to shuck oysters,  process crabs and harvest salmon.

Maryland Delegate Chris Adams, R-Caroline, Dorchester, Talbot & Wicomico, said last month he still had concerns over the recurring shortages of seasonal workers in the industry, which he called “gut-wrenching.”

Van Hollen responded to Adams’s concerns, saying he realized “it’s hard when it seems like we’re doing this on a short-term basis rather than having a long-term solution.”

Van Hollen, Cardin and Rep. Andy Harris, R-Cockeysville, said they are working together to find this permanent fix.

by Nicole Weinstein

Chesapeake Crab Industry Remains Crippled by Visa Shortage, Coronavirus

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Responding to employers’ calls, including those of crab meat processing companies in Virginia and Maryland, the federal government announced March 5 that it would release an additional 35,000 temporary visas for foreign workers.

That still may not be enough to quench the Chesapeake Bay seafood houses’ demand for temporary workers, according to the trade group that represents the industry. And they may still arrive too late to help much or perhaps get stuck on the other side of the border, as the United States March 20 closed its Mexican border for unessential travel because of coronavirus concerns.

Several seafood company owners and watermen had implored the Trump administration to issue 64,000 more visas, the cap set by Congress.

Jack Brooks, co-owner of J.M. Clayton Seafood Co. in Cambridge, and president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, said he expects a worker shortfall, despite the government’s action.

Initially, the Department of Homeland Security doled out 33,000 work visas, which are in effect for six months beginning April 1. With the added 35,000 visas, the total still falls well short of the 100,000 slots that U.S. employers nationally had sought to fill.

The agency will likely conduct a lottery to determine which companies obtain visas, Brooks said.

“It’d be great to think that all of [the crab houses] get lucky and win, but I don’t think the odds are great that they all get staffed up,” he said.

The temporary visas, known as H-2B visas, are made available annually to workers in seafood, landscaping, construction and other seasonal fields. To be eligible, employers must prove there aren’t enough domestic workers willing or able to fill the positions.

Only three of the county’s nine picking houses had received their workers during the first visa release, businesses say.

Now, because of the sweeping coronavirus pandemic, it’s unclear if and when the additional 35,000 workers will arrive, said Amanda Wright, CEO of Virginia-based Phoenix Labor Consultants.

Releasing those visas “is not even being talked about now” at the federal government, said Wright, whose clients include Chesapeake seafood processors.

Mexico is one of the main sources of seafood workers. It’s likely they will be considered essential workers, but the United States has shuttered its embassy consulates in Mexico, which threatens to halt the visa application process.

Still, the government signaled it would continue processing workers who have previously participated in the program. The requirement for a face-to-face interview would be waived.

Meanwhile, Guatamala, another major supplier of H-2B workers, closed its borders for at least 15 days beginning March 16, adding more uncertainty to the situation.

Even if the administration were to begin taking employer applications immediately, Brooks said, the earliest that crab houses could expect to welcome the workers would be in early May. The Maryland crab season kicks off April 1.

“Customers are wondering, ‘Where am I going to get the crab meat?’” Brooks added.

A crab house that doesn’t receive any workers could be forced to close its doors for this season, with the possibility that it might never reopen because its customers and suppliers will have moved on, industry leaders say.

Several dozen watermen, crab industry leaders and local elected officials gathered March 2 inside a picking house on Hooper’s Island in rural Dorchester County, MD, to passionately plea for the Trump administration to release more visas.

Seafood is one of the island’s only industries. It is home to eight of the state’s 20 crab-picking houses.

“I hope everyone can see this is more than a job issue. [It’s] more of an American community issue,” said Aubrey Vincent, sales manager at Lindy’s Seafood on Hooper’s. “A lot of these family businesses are holding on by a thread.”

At picking houses, workers scoop meat from freshly caught crabs and collect the chunks into plastic containers to be sold to restaurants and retailers. The processors often struggle to find enough local employees, especially in places like Hooper’s Island, on Dorchester’s isolated coastline, which is a winding, 40-minute drive to the nearest Walmart and movie theater.

So, the businesses turn to foreign workers, mostly from Mexico. The jobs may be seasonal, but many workers return to the same employers year after year, industry members say.

“I consider these H-2B workers part of my family,” said Darlene Ruark of the W.T. Ruark & Co. picking house. “My son grew up with those workers, and they consider him family, too.”

But for the last 15 years, some picking houses have been left waiting for months to receive their workers or have been shut out altogether from the program. In 2018, for example, a new lottery-style allocation system left Dorchester’s processors with a 40% shortfall of foreign workers four months into the six-month season.

The region’s seafood industry blames the visa shortage on increasing competition from other business sectors. But above all, they blame Congress for not heeding their repeated calls to set a higher cap or separate seafood workers into a separate visa class.

“Isn’t this a bunch of B. S. that our government is here trying to put us out of business?” asked A.E. Phillips and Sons CEO Steve Phillips. “It’s stupid. It’s something that can be fixed in five minutes.”

Homeland Security temporarily raised the cap by as many as 30,000 workers in recent years to help meet business’ demands. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and several members of Congress from Maryland and Virginia had called on the administration to take that action once again.

Hogan described the additional visas as “welcome relief” but implored that “we still urgently need a long-term solution to this problem.”

The Maryland Department of Agriculture released an economic study on the day of the Hooper’s event, showing that the state’s economy would take up to a $150 million hit without the visa workers in the seafood industry.

By Jeremy Cox

Feds Release Additional H-2B Visas to Help MD Seafood Industry

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With less than a month until the start of the blue crab harvest in Maryland, federal officials have released an additional 35,000 temporary worker visas to help Eastern Shore’s crab picking houses and the seafood industry here and in other states.

The release of the supplemental H-2B visas for the second half of FY2020 comes with “new conditions to protect American workers, provide relief to seasonal employers who truly need it, and reduce fraud and abuse in the program,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a press release.

DHS said the program will “offer an opportunity for nationals of key Central American partner nations to work lawfully in the United States. Of the released H-2B visas, 10,000 are specifically designated for nationals of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, in support of these countries’ efforts to work with the U.S. to stem the flow of illegal migration in the region and encourage lawful migration to the United States.”

Gov. Larry Hogan, U.S. Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, and First District Congressman Andy Harris are among those who have been pushing for the supplemental visas, as they have in prior years.

Those officials and DHS agree that Congress needs to make long-term reforms to the H-2B visa program. Visas are released at the start of the fiscal year and quickly allocated, often leaving businesses who don’t need such workers until later — such as the crab processing houses — out of luck.

For the past few years, federal officials have granted requests for the release of supplemental visas to help the Shore’s crab processors and other seafood industries.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan

“I am pleased to report that our efforts to make additional H-2B visas available to help our state’s seafood industry have again proven successful,” Hogan said in a press release. “While we still urgently need a long-term solution to this problem, this announcement is welcome relief for our state’s iconic crab processing houses and seafood industry.”

Harris had sent a letter, signed by 151 members of the House and 38 senators, urging Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf to release, as quickly as possible, additional H-2B visas to meet seasonal labor demands.

“I applaud the Department of Homeland Security for approving the release of 35,000 supplemental H-2B visas in time for the upcoming summer season,” Harris said in a press release. “This is 5,000 more supplemental visas than had been approved last year.

Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md.-1st

“The record low unemployment rate under the Trump Administration and oversubscription to the H-2B visa program is a debilitating issue for the economy of Maryland’s First Congressional District and the country,” Harris said. “I commend President Trump and Acting Secretary Wolf for providing these extras visas — and I remain committed to working with my colleagues in Congress to pass a permanent solution to the chronic H-2B visa shortage across this country — something that only Congress can do.”

Homeland Security said the department is “taking significant steps to promote integrity in the program, combat fraud and abuse, and ensure the supplemental allocation aligns with the national interest.

“Reform measures include: requiring matching start dates on an H-2B petition and the employer’s start date of need; collaborating with the Department of Labor on increased employer site visits; and, generally limiting the supplemental visas to returning workers, who are known to follow immigration law in good faith.”

The supplemental visas will be made available in two batches to prevent a small handful of employers from using all the visas: 20,000 for start dates beginning April 1, and 15,000 for start dates beginning May 15. Adding a second batch will address specific congressional concerns about late-season filers.

Maryland’s Best Seafood, a marketing program within the Maryland Department of Agriculture, released a survey earlier this week measuring the economic impact of the state’s crab industry and the importance of the federal H-2B temporary visa program.

All eight crab processors surveyed agreed that the current lottery system for awarding temporary visa requests creates uncertainty that hurts their businesses, and that limiting the number of available H-2B visas hurts Maryland’s seafood industry as a whole.

Seven of the eight crab companies indicated that they would not open for the 2020 crab season without adequate H-2B workers.

Without these seasonal workers, the survey showed that income for watermen would drop by $12.5 million; processors would lose $37-$49 million in sales; Maryland would lose 914-1,367 jobs; and the overall hit to the state’s economy could be $100-$150 million.

Federal immigration officials had announced last month that they had doled out the national limit of 33,000 work visas, which are in effect for six months beginning April 1. That was far short of the nearly 100,000 slots that employers had sought to fill.

In Maryland, seafood processors say they received roughly one-third of the 450 visas they need for this season, which also kicks off April 1. The shortage, they warn, could force some of the affected processing plants to close their doors for this season, with the possibility that they might never reopen because their customers and suppliers will have moved on.

Workers pick crabs at Russell Hall Seafood in this file photo.

Several dozen watermen, crab industry leaders and local elected officials gathered March 2 inside a picking house on Hooper’s Island to passionately plead for the Trump administration to release 64,000 more visas, the limit set by Congress on how many can be added.

“I hope everyone can see this is more than a job issue, [it’s] more of an American community issue,” said Aubrey Vincent, sales manager at Lindy’s Seafood on Hooper’s, home to eight of the state’s 20 crab-picking houses. “A lot of these family businesses are holding on by a thread.”

The temporary visas, known as H-2B visas, are made available annually to workers in seafood, landscaping, construction and other seasonal fields. To be eligible, employers must prove there aren’t enough domestic workers willing or able to fill the positions.

For the last 15 years, some picking houses have been left waiting for months to receive their workers or been shut out altogether from the program. In 2018, for example, a new lottery-style allocation system left Dorchester’s processors with a 40% shortfall of foreign workers four months into the season.

So far this year, only three of the county’s nine picking houses have received their workers, businesses say.

The region’s seafood industry blames the visa shortage on increasing competition from other business sectors. But above all, they blame Congress for not heeding their repeated calls to set a higher cap or separate seafood workers into a separate visa class.

“Isn’t this a bunch of B.S. that our government is here trying to put us out of business?” asked A.E. Phillips and Sons CEO Steve Phillips. “It’s stupid. It’s something that can be fixed in five minutes.”

Calls to expand the program face an uphill battle in an administration that has largely moved to constrict both legal and illegal immigration. The issue represents a rare point of conflict between Trump and voters in Dorchester County, which overwhelmingly supported him in 2016.

Some of the Hooper’s Island speakers appealed directly to the president.

“We follow the rules. We do it the right way,” said Jeanne Phillips of Hooper’s Island General Store. “So, please just let us do what we know how to do well. It’s hard enough to keep people in a county like this.

“President Trump, we’re counting on you to keep Hooper’s Island great for many generations to come.”

Staff writer Jeremy Cox of the Bay Journal News Service contributed to this article.