The Fiscal Year 2014 Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Bill was recently passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee and includes a provision to allow Maryland’s seafood industry to stagger its seasonal, foreign workers on H-2B visas to support harvests during peak seasons.
“It is imperative to the seafood industry that there is staggered crossings,” Karen Oertel, owner of W.H. Harris Seafood and Harris Crab House in Kent Narrows said.
Jack Brooks, of the Cambridge-based J.M. Clayton Company and president of the board of directors of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, said due to the nature of the H-2B visa program, which resets for the fiscal year every 1 October, the crabbing industry in Maryland had problem getting seasonal foreign workers because most of the visas, which cap at 66,000 a year, were already granted before the crabbing industry's time of need, which is in April.
