Maryland gets H2B visas to fill locally critical jobs tht have gone unfilled

[Stinky The Clown]

O'Malley Releases Statement On Crab Pickers Visas

Temporary work visas will be granted to crab pickers.

Governor Martin O'Malley released this statement today following the announcement by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that it will release additional FY09 H-2B visas for temporary workers, which will provide immediate relief to numerous crab processing businesses in Maryland.

"On behalf of all Marylanders, particularly those on our Eastern Shore, I want to thank Congressman Frank Kratovil, who along with Senator Mikulski, Majority Leader Hoyer and others, worked tirelessly towards today's announcement by the Department of Homeland Security.

"Maryland's historic crab industry depends on the H-2B program, and today's announcement is good news for all whose livelihood depends on the crab industry. These additional temporary worker visas will allow the crab picking houses on our Shore to remain strong throughout the season with the workforce they need."

Federal immigration laws cap the H-2B program at 66,000 visas per year, and many crab processing facilities on Maryland's Eastern Shore have had their H-2B applications denied as a result of the DHS formula for allocating visas under this cap. DHS will acknowledge today that visas have been under-allocated under the fiscal year 2009 cap and an additional 25,000 visas will be immediately released. Maryland's crab industry has been working with a severe labor shortage that has prevented a number of processing facilities from opening this season, while those that have been opened have been operating at levels far below capacity. Reopening these facilities will have a positive impact on the local economy. A recent study from the University of Maryland found that each H-2B worker in the crab industry supports 2.5 American jobs.

http://wjz.com/local/crab.pickers.meat.2.1117310.html


Crab picking is nasty, rotten work with low pay. And it s seasonal. The lack of pickers has closed down a few packers already.

In your view, should these visas have been issued?

[robinlynne]

1. what does the lat sentence mean; each visa supports 2.5 jobs....

[Hello_Kitty]

3. Maybe it takes into account all the jobs involving the sale of crabs

Markets, grocery stores, food processing plants, restaurants, etc.

[notesdev]

4. It means he thinks you're an idiot who will believe anything -nt

[Hello_Kitty]

2. If the work is that nasty and rotten, should anyone be doing it?

I often wonder why it's just accepted that certain jobs will always have horrible conditions and that an underclass of human beings must be sacrificed to ensure they get done. But "those people" don't mind the work at all, so we're told.

[Kaleva]

15. I've crawled thru human waste...

in order to repair a broken sewer pipe located in a very tight crawl space under an elderly woman's home. She was quite embarrassed that I was covered with her feces and toilet paper but she was also very happy that I was willing and able to do the job.

[Hello_Kitty]

18. Did you get paid well for it? eom

[Kaleva]

19. I was paid $10.00 an hour back then. 1998.

It took less then two hours to do the job so I made under $20.00 for it.

[imdjh]

5. No. Those jobs should go to the traditional workers.

The issue with crab picking isn't that you or I consider it nasty work. There were once women who did this work with pride, who did it with speed, and who made money at it..... until the labor department shut down the employers for paying workers by the pound and in cash under the table. It worked, the workers could come and go as they pleased, the employers only cared how much you produced, and books have been written about this "ancient craft" including the lives of the women who did it. The fooling around, the singing, the hierarchy, the respect, and the annual competition for the worker (almost always a woman) who could pick crab faster than anyone else.

We fucked it up with regulations.

[Stinky The Clown]

6. I don't disagree with you

Some of those women are still picking.

I was to a seafood festival some years back and watched crab picking contest. Pretty amazing. It isn't just speed. It is the quality of the mat picked.

[NYC_SKP]

7. I'd pay more for MD crab to raise the wages, but foreign crab would take the market.

So I'd prefer a little protectionism be used to allow higher wages to be paid to these hard workers.

We'd get better product, too.

Fuck foreign fisheries.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. We eat a lot of fish and not much meat. There is a huge difference between foreign and local stuff.

There is a lot of farmed shrimp on the market, much of it from India and Asia. All of it has a mushy sort of texture and a slightly muddy taste. We now buy only US Gulf Shrimp. It is available at several stores for maybe 10% more than the (in our view) inferior imported/farmed shrimp.

Similarly, crab meat. Imported crab has a different taste and texture. Here the price difference is dramatic. We pay more of US blue crab. It can be from the Chesapeake, North Carolina, or Louisiana.

Live crabs, obviously, can't be imported.

[Greyhound]

21. Bingo! We dance around the solutions forever. Thanks. n/t

[madokie]

9. No

The prices paid and the conditions under which these jobs are undesirable need fixed.

[Stinky The Clown]

11. The conditions aren't so bad ..... it is the essential nature of the work that's hard.

Assume a clean, well lighted, well ventilated work area. Assume comfort mats to stand of or comfortable stools to sit on. Assume, even, that you're doing the work in your own home kitchen.

Crabs are hard to pick. Done barehanded (pretty much the only way to do it) the sharp shells an cut hands. More scratches than cuts. Think "pain by a thousand scratches".

I don't think working conditions - or even pay - is the issue.

It is simply a hard job.

[madokie]

12. I will confess I don't have a clue what picking crabs is

But I just couldn't pass up replying in a thread about that. I'll google and find out here in a sec though

Add: after reading about picking crabs I feel I'd have a hard time getting enough meat to use in a recipe becuuse of all the meat I'd eat so I'd not be applying for this job.

[Hello_Kitty]

13. But 'those people' are willing to do it, and for low pay.

Yeah, it is about pay and conditions. If it paid $30 an hour Americans would be lining up to do it.

[imdjh]

23. people did it for a long time. it isn't about making $30/hr

They did it seasonally, couple of days a week in addition to the other odd jobs, ag jobs that they did. Then along came stuff like disability, food stamps, rent subsidies, medicaid and all this means tested stuff. Still, no problem because these folks worked under the table. And they liked it that way, who wants to pay taxes? Besides, we're not talking about a fortune here.

Then labor got involved under the auspices of "safety" and "health" and employers had to become legit. Then the workers had to choose between part time pay and full time benefits and had to choose the benefits or lose eligibility and have to re-certify when the season was over. Same as most seasonal ag.

Our system is well meaning, but it doesn't take into account seasonal working and living. It's funny when you think about it: if you call something "Native American" the US government will jump through hoops to accommodate it, even if it looks backward to the average person's eye. But if it's just plain American, then it gets killed without remorse if it can't or won't conform to a clock punching 9-5 government worker's idea of correctness.

[Hello_Kitty]

24. You clearly have more familiarity with this type of work than I do

And I think you make some great points about public subsidies dis-incentivizing paid work. Another one is how the father can't live in the home if the family receives public assistance. All those are things that can be worked on and tweaked if there is the political will.

OTOH, I still think we need to take a hard look at some of these industries that claim they won't survive without being provided with a steady stream of desperate people willing to work for next to nothing. The typical rebuttal will be "but things will be more expensive!" So what? If paying everyone a living wage and providing them with decent conditions means paying more for stuff, so be it.

[Nikia]

10. If they have really shown a good effort to hire Americans

I am not sure where they draw the line though. When my husband served a few weeks in jail, a couple dozen of the inmates who were eligble for work release applied to a company that used seasonal agriculturual foreign workers. Although the company dropped off the applications, they hired none of the inmates calling them unqualified. One doesn't need many qualifications for the sort of work they would be doing and the inmates came from many different work and educationnal backgrounds. Most of the couple hundred workers they were foreign agriculturual workers.
I know that they may have had to hire some non Americans because of the relatively low population of the area, seasonal nature of the employment, and low pay for hard work. I don't think that it was fair though that they didn't hire any of the jail inmates who wanted and were eligible for jobs.

[Hello_Kitty]

14. Farms are the absolute worst about that

They avoid American workers out of fear they will blow the whistle on the awful working conditions there.

[Kaleva]

16. It's the nature of the business.

I've been run over by a bull, kicked countless times by cows, keeled over from heat exhaustion, suffered cuts that required stitches, fell out of a hay loft, drove tractors doing field work from early in the morning till late in the evening, butchered many animals, and been so cold during the winter I lost all feeling in my hands and feet. and I did all this before I was old enough to get my driver's license.

[Hello_Kitty]

17. I'm not talking about that stuff

I'm talking about how migrant workers who pick produce are practically enslaved by their employers. http://vivirlatino.com/tags/migrant-workers

[Greyhound]

20. No. The pay should be increased to attract American workers.

I don't know how bad unemployment is in Maryland, but I suspect it is plentiful. Nasty rotten work should be better compensated, that's how you get people to do it.

Remember Mc Same's $50 p/hr lettuce pickers?

[Hello_Kitty]

22. It's so obvious, isn't it? eom