Louisiana Agriculture Commissioner DR. MIKE STRAIN (photo courtesy of Mike Strain/Facebook)
Louisiana Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain says the state’s crawfish industry is dealing with a significant labor shortage. Strain told state lawmakers that crawfish processing plants do not have enough workers to peel and package crawfish, because the federal government has put a cap on foreign guest workers.
“I’m a bit frustrated from the answers I’m getting from Washington, because they’re basically saying ‘Well, they’ve met the cap’ and ‘You know what? there’s nothing more we can do.’ I said, ‘No that’s unacceptable,'” Strain said.
Several crawfish processing plants have shut their doors as a result.
These packaging facilities rely on workers through the federal H-2B program, which allows immigrants to receive guest worker visas for seasonal jobs, and they return home at the end of the season. These are jobs that most Americans are not interested in doing.
Strain says he’s sent letters and called the White House and several other federal agencies, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, asking for the cap be lifted for the crawfish industry.
“We’re pushing hard, but Washington is not, and I repeat, is not giving us really any hope of getting these laborers in,” Strain said.
The businesses applied for the visas in November as they have done in the past; but their applications were denied, and they were told re-apply in January. Strain says that the whole process has gotten out of hand.
“Some of these workers have been coming for 10, 15 years and so it’s on schedule, and this is unacceptable,” Strain noted.
The cap on working visas does not impact live and boiled crawfish, but it’s unclear what will happen with the crawfish that’s supposed to be peeled and shipped to other areas of the country.
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