http://washingtontimes.com/business/200 ... -9967r.htm

look to the left and click for bigger picture of Maricela Lopez Hernandez, left, Enriqueta Pena Barrera, center, and Alba Hernandez Mata, right, all guest workers from Mexico, pick crabs at the J.M. Clayton Company in Cambridge, Md., last Monday.
Daniel Rosenbaum (THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

Bay firms depend on foreign workers

By Jeffrey Sparshott
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Jack Brooks observes the 25 or so women sitting at stainless steel tables, picking lumps of meat out of blue crabs fished from the Chesapeake Bay. There are a handful of Americans and about 18 Mexicans packing up small tubs for sale to restaurants and markets.
"We have to have the Mexican workers just to sustain our business. American workers simply are not available," the co-owner of J.M. Clayton Co., a Cambridge, Md., business founded by his great-grandfather in 1890, said last month.
Many in the United States disagree, arguing that foreign workers drive down wages and impose social, cultural and other costs on the United States.
But Mr. Brooks earlier this year led a popular effort by the Maryland crab industry to deal with a potential shortage of foreign workers, making sure Mexicans could keep heading to the Eastern Shore, legally, where they are an integral part of the local economy.
Seafood processors won a two-year reprieve when Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland Democrat, ushered into law a temporary increase in the number of seasonal workers who can come to the United States.
The potential shortage of seasonal workers along the Chesapeake illustrated a broader problem in the United States â€â€