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Louisiana lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are sponsoring legislation that would reclassify those who work on crawfish farms. Congressmen Troy Carter, Cleo Fields and Clay Higgins are joining forces in proposing what’s known as the CRAW (Crawfish Reclassification for Agricultural Workforce) Act. Andy Brown with the Louisiana Farm Bureau says Congress had gotten it wrong by not classifying crawfish processors as agricultural workers.
“It was their interpretation that preparing those crawfish for market, i.e. boiling them or peeling them, was an industrial use down in the legal definitions of the programs,” Brown said.
By reclassifying them as agricultural workers, crawfish processors would be eligible for the uncapped H-2A visa program instead of having to secure a capped H-2B visa. Brown says the current arrangement could be detrimental to food security, as evidenced this year by the shortage of crawfish peelers.
“We’re up against a lot of other competition; as demand for that program has grown, things have grown more complicated to acquire a visa within that cap,” Brown explained.
Brown says these workers are not taking any jobs away from Americans, who he says, on the whole, simply do not find that work very “a-peel-ing.”
“They get preferential treatment. They get first opportunity at these jobs, and they simply don’t show up. And then the very few, I’m talking less than 1% of folks that do show up, usually don’t make it to their first paycheck before they’re walking off the job,” Brown noted.
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