WASHINGTON -- With Congress at an impasse over visas for seasonal laborers, the owners of Eastern Shore businesses that have counted on foreign workers to pick crabs, wash dishes and can corn are bracing for a difficult summer ahead - with consequences that they warn will spread throughout the state economy.
The J.M. Clayton Seafood Co. in Cambridge, the oldest crab-picking house on the Eastern Shore, has pushed opening day back a month. Phillips Crab House in Ocean City, which ordinarily opens Palm Sunday to take advantage of the Easter Week crowds, remains shuttered until April.
The owner of S.E.W. Friel in Queenstown, the last cannery on the Shore, doesn't want to talk about how he will cope without the 50 foreigners he says he needs to fill out his labor force.
"We've got a couple of hundred farmers that are dependent upon us to run," said Jay Friel III. "We've got can manufacturers, truckers, haulers, box people. I can't even contemplate not getting the workers," he said. "It's not an option. Congress has to pass this."
Lawmakers remain deadlocked over the H2B visa program, which brings foreigners to the United States to work in temporary, low-paying and often grueling jobs that business owners say Americans won't take. The workers are required to leave the country when their visas expire.
The federal government caps the program at 66,000 visas annually - a quota that was reached this year on Jan. 2, before many Maryland businesses were permitted to apply.
During the previous three years, employers were allowed to work around that limit by bringing back workers from past seasons. Under an exemption introduced by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, to help Eastern Shore businesses, those employees - more than 69,000 nationwide last year - were not counted against the cap.
But the so-called returning worker exemption expired in September. And while Mikulski was able to shepherd an extension through the Senate, it has been blocked in the House by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The 21-Democrat bloc, frustrated by the collapse last year of a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws, opposes what members describe as "piecemeal" efforts that they fear would blunt the impetus for the broader legislation they seek.
"The discussion over extending H2B visas is inherently linked to our nation's greater immigration debate, and it must be resolved within that context," said Rep. Joe Baca, the California Democrat who chairs the caucus. "We look forward to working with the business community and others to promote real immigration reform - inclusive of enforcement, legalization, and new worker programs."
That puts the caucus at odds with lawmakers who represent the seasonal businesses that have relied on H2B workers - ski slopes in the Rocky Mountains and shrimp processing plants on the Gulf Coast, golf courses in California and summer resorts in Maine. In this election year, Congress is unlikely to take another stab at the divisive immigration issue.
Jack Brooks is frustrated.
"This is not immigration," says Brooks, who owns the J.M. Clayton Seafood Co. with two brothers and a son. "These people come work for us every year; they're not immigrants. They just come, and they work and go home. ... What's the message here? That you can close or you can hire illegals?"
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed both sides to come to an agreement. But talks collapsed earlier this month, and aides say the sides remain far apart. More than 90 members of Congress from both parties wrote President Bush this year to ask that he raise the visa quota with an executive order. Business owners staged a "fly-in" at the Capitol this month to lobby lawmakers.
In the meantime, the clock is ticking.
"Whatever we need to do, we need to do by May 1," Mikulski said. The Maryland Democrat said she had had "very constructive conversations with people in the House."
"It is not dead," she said.
Brooks, whose family has owned the J.M. Clayton Seafood Co. for 118 years, was able to secure visas this year for the Mexican workers he hires to extract crab meat. But they aren't allowed to start until April 1; if the returning-workers exemption were still in effect, returning employees could have been working by now.
Brooks has turned shipments of crabs away. Nonetheless, he counts himself fortunate.
"There are several in our group who beat the cap, but unfortunately, not everybody did," Brooks said. "Those folks, you know, they're not in very good shape right now."
Employers may not apply for visas until 120 days before they need the workers. That's how Phillips Seafood Restaurants missed out. By the time the government had processed the paperwork, the quota was full.
Phillips ordinarily hires more than 90 foreigners each summer to prepare food and wash dishes at its three locations in Ocean City - jobs that assistant general manager Sean Bryan says Americans don't want. The law requires employers to advertise openings locally before hiring foreigners.
Without any H2B workers this year, the local chain is delaying the opening of its oldest and largest restaurant, the 52-year-old Phillips Crab House, by three weeks.
Bryan says the decision will cost Phillips tens of thousands of dollars in business. When the season does begin, he says, he will have to turn to foreign students, eligible to work under a different program.
"You know, it will make it a lot harder on us," he said. "The H2B workers, we have some that have worked here for up to 10 years. They come back each season. Whereas those students, they're here for a year; if we're lucky, they'll come back a second year. So we lose all that experience."
The H2B program has its critics. Some immigration opponents object to the reliance on foreign workers. Some union leaders say cheap foreign labor depresses domestic wages.
But Douglas Lipton, a resource economist at the University of Maryland, says the workers contribute to the broader economy. In a study of the Eastern Shore seafood processing industry, he concluded that between the money they spend and the labor they contribute while they are here, each H2B crab picker creates about 2 1/2 American jobs.
"Those plants are at a threat of survival if they can't get the workers," Lipton said. "These crab meat industries will essentially go away."
Crab-picking houses in Virginia and North Carolina have closed for want of the H2B workers. Brooks, who says he employed about 45 American workers last year in addition to 90 foreigners, warns of the impact that such closures in Maryland would have on "the whole economic network of the fishery," from the watermen to the truck drivers to the markets.
"We're getting desperate to save this year's season for a lot of folks," he said.
matthew.brown@baltsun.com