Foreign worker shortage hurting Maryland's crab industry

A shortage of visas for foreign workers and pandemic-caused disruptions hobbled Maryland’s crab industry, forcing two-thirds of the major seafood processors to rely on a few employees or close business.

New visas issued at the start of October finally allowed guest workers to enter the US, but Washington's prolonged deadlock over immigration policy has left Maryland crab industry leaders to fret for their future.

According to Jack Brooks, president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, it remains to be seen whether they would survive the staffing problem.

Blue crabs from the Chesapeake Bay are Maryland’s best-known export, with the state being the second-largest producer in 2018 due to a harvest valued at $188.4 million, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Crab processors are enjoying a boom this year as prices rose due to the pandemic.

Processors rely on Mexican and other Latin American workers on temporary H-2B visas to extract the crab meat from their shells.

The Maryland crab industry only needs only around 450 H-2B visas, but a change in the procedure for allocating the visas resulted in only three processors being given the authorizations as the crab season began in April.

The US government in March announced it would release 35,000 more visas, but the pandemic caused the plan to be abandoned.