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Maryland Seafood Trade Workforce Decimated By Seasonal Worker Lottery

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- A collapsing industry. That's what crab picking houses on the Eastern Shore say they are facing because of federal action that's created a labor shortage.

In Dorchester County, eight crab picking houses provide 85% of Maryland's crab meat. But only four of those houses have the foreign workers they need to pick crabs.

One of them is AE Phillips and Sons.

"We're going into the second month of the season, and there's no Maryland blue crab meat coming out of our plant on Hooper's Island," said AE Phillips and Sons manager Morgan Tolley.

For more than two decades, the eight picking houses have depended on temporary seasonal workers from Mexico.

"I've had five people apply for a job, and nobody showed up for a job interview," said Bryan Hall, with G.W. Hall Seafood. "Local people don't want to do this job because it's like six to seven months a year, and people want a full time job. I understand that. Without these [workers] we'd be in a real pickle."

G.W. Hall Seafood has the seasonal workers, but nearby Russell Hall Seafood does not.

"We applied for 50 this year, that's what we've been doing for 25 years," says owner Harry Phillips. The end result: zero.

Every year, the government issues 66,000 seasonal workers visas. They used to be awarded when a business proved American workers would not do the needed jobs. But in a switch, the Trump Administration used a lottery to award businesses.

"They put everybody in a lottery, and you just gotta have the luck of the draw, and we were fortunate enough to get picked," says Robin Hall, of G.W. Hall Seafood. "But it's not right that these other people did not get picked."

The trickle down effect is already hitting American workers who drive trucks, do office work, supply packing materials, and especially watermen. With half the picking houses closed, that eliminates half of the businesses that buy their crabs.

"May watermen, they're calling me and saying,'Morgan, what's going to happen?,'" Morgan Tolley said.

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