Crab crisis: Anti-immigrant hysteria costs Hoopers Island jobs.

'Hoopers Island lost the lottery. There’s really no better way to explain the economic devastation that is gradually unfolding on this tiny Dorchester County community, among the most remote on the Eastern Shore. Crabs are a main source of livelihood here, and so far this year, four crab processing plants have gone belly up — victims of the Trump administration’s decision to tighten restrictions on the guest worker visas known as H-2B.

Each year, in a pattern as reliable as the return of blue crabs from the main stem to the rivers and creeks of the Chesapeake Bay, hundreds of guest workers, mostly women from Mexico, have traveled to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay to pick crabs at one of 19 or so processing plants scattered along the waterfront, mostly on the Eastern Shore, in places like Cambridge and Rock Hall, Crisfield and Fishing Creek. They come for half a year as the crab season flourishes and then return to their homes. It is a proven economic model — the plants get reliable and reasonably priced labor, the workers get to support their families, local watermen get a market for their summer catch, the villages prosper.

Now, all that’s changed. As The Sun’s Scott Dance writes, the H-2B visas were dispensed through a lottery this year instead of first-come, first-served, and the crab packers came up short. Without those workers, the four Hoopers Island plants closed their doors. And while the full consequences of their action won’t be known for weeks yet — crabs are just now coming into season in Maryland — it’s safe to assume that more crab houses will close, a lot of watermen will struggle to find buyers for their catch and local communities will suffer.'>>>

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-0506-crab-visas-20180503-story.html