migrant crab pickers delay Senate action
Last updated: April 15. 2005 12:00AM
Crab picker shortage ties up Iraq funding bill
By Suzanne Gamboa
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A shortage of migrant oyster shuckers and crab pickers is threatening to delay Senate action on an $80.6 billion emergency bill to pay for continuing U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Crab season opened April 1 in Maryland, but several businesses in the Chesapeake Bay seafood industry are without pickers and shuckers because the ceiling of 66,000 visas for foreign workers under the government’s H2B program was reached Jan. 3. Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski is trying to amend the Iraq bill to do something about it.
Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was feverishly trying to keep the bill free of immigration issues after the House last month included measures to deny driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and tighten political asylum laws.
Senators on both sides of a number of divisive immigration issues – among them President Bush’s desire to let illegal immigrants remain in the country under a work program – said bringing up any one of them would open the floodgates to them all.
"It will open a long and complicated debate on the floor of the Senate," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "We should not do that, please."
Despite pleas from Mr. Frist, Ms. Feinstein and the White House, Ms. Mikulski, D-Md., refused to back off her attempt to amend the bill to provide Maryland seafood businesses more low-wage immigrant workers. Ms. Mikulski’s proposal would exempt from the quota seasonal workers who were hired in previous years.
"It would be wonderful if we could have comprehensive reform," Ms. Mikulski said. "But for now we have to look at those states that are facing a crisis because of a flawed immigration system."
Ms. Mikulski decided to proceed with her measure after Mr. Frist wouldn’t promise to oppose the House immigration provisions when negotiators meet to blend the Senate and House versions into a final bill, said a Democratic source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Four Maryland seafood processors got H2B workers this season. But 13 others in the state and a cannery that account for about 75 percent of the production did not, said Jack Brooks, owner of JM Clayton, a seafood wholesaler in Cambridge, Md.
A cool spring has delayed the beginning of crab harvesting and provided a temporary reprieve, but without more workers, some businesses could close, Mr. Brooks said Wednesday.
"If we lose our production capability for a year, our markets are going to be gone to cheaper imports," he said. "Don’t penalize us because we’re trying to do it legally. A lot of people are out there hiring illegally. We don’t want to do that."
Jay Newcomb, owner of A.E. Phillips, a Fishing Creek, Md., crab processing operation, is one of the unlucky ones. He sought 50 workers and got none, even though he’s been using the program since 1990. "I have two American crab pickers, that’s all I have," he said.
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