Industries in crisis

Lack of workers to pick, process and peel could be devastating

(A link to this story at The Daily Advertiser)

Bob Moser
The (Lafayette) Daily Advertiser
March 2, 2008

Spanish gospel music should be echoing through the halls of Abbeville’s Harvest Time Seafood.

This crab and crawfish processing plant is normally bustling by now with young men and women from Mexico, their aprons damp and fingers cold, plucking seafood meat out of tiny shells. Most call this their second home, working year after year for owner Kevin Dartez during harvest season under the federal H-2B Guest-Worker Visa Program.

They’d pay taxes, contribute to Social Security and return home at the end of the harvest. Employers can bring in H-2B guest workers for many seasonal non-agriculture jobs like food processing, only after an extensive process proves no American wants the job.

But guest workers have been lost in the shuffle of the illegal immigration debate, resurfacing just as many realize how an unrealistically low cap of 66,000 guest visas has put the U.S. economy in danger.

Go visit Dartez today and see his empty tables. He’s got time to kill, and can give you a tour of his barren coolers, an unused cooker, the new oyster division he can’t start and everything else 50 guest workers would be doing for Harvest Time right now.

His story is just the prologue of a potential nightmare for South Louisiana, where hundreds of businesses in seafood, agriculture and tourism predict financial ruin unless an emergency Congressional effort forces a fix to the guest worker backlog.