JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Farmers, landscapers and the hospitality industry have long complained that the U.S. government doesn't issue enough guest worker visas to meet seasonal labor needs. Now a niche industry in Louisiana has been nearly shut out of the federal program it uses for migrant workers, and it's upended crawfish season. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Alan Lawson checks on his crawfish pond in Crowley, Louisiana, meeting the boat as it pulls ashore with the morning's catch.
ALAN LAWSON: Does it work?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Uh huh.
LAWSON: Bit slower, but it's good?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: More time.
ELLIOTT: The farm is testing out a new harvesting system that separates the crawfish by size right on the boat.
LAWSON: This would be what's considered a peeler size, ok? And the ones in the purple sacks are a little bit bigger.
ELLIOTT: The squirmy, deep red crustaceans are a springtime delicacy around here. The bigger ones in the purple sack are bound for the live market.
LAWSON: So, you know, those are crawfish that are going to get boiled, and people put in, you know, all kind of stuff in the pot with them, and they dump them on the table, and that's the ones you want to eat.
ELLIOTT: The suck-the-head, eat-the-tail variety. It's the smaller crawfish that are caught up in a labor shortage this year. They're typically bound for processing plants, where migrants on seasonal H-2B guest worker visas peel the crawfish and pick out the tail meat. That's what's shipped to groceries and restaurants and used for dishes like crawfish etouffee. But Lawson says a late-season rule change by the U.S. Departments of Labor and Homeland Security cut crawfish processors out, so his plant doesn't have the staff he usually hires from December through June to peel and pack crawfish.
LAWSON: We've tried hiring temp workers, local workers, just we have had very little success. Local workers don't want these jobs. First of all, they're seasonal. American citizens, they need 12-month jobs. They don't need six-month jobs.
ELLIOTT: It's left the industry in a lurch.
MIKE STRAIN: For many of our crawfish processors, the season is basically - for them, is over.
ELLIOTT: Louisiana agriculture commissioner Mike Strain.
STRAIN: What the bottom line - what this means is a economic loss to our crawfish farmers and processors in excess of $100 million, the cost to Louisiana's economy in excess of $300 million.
ELLIOTT: According to the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation, 15 of the state's 20 crawfish processors were completely left out of the guest worker program they use. Andy Brown, director of commodities and public policy for the bureau, says changing the rules midstream has created significant uncertainty and left crawfish farmers with nowhere to sell their catch.
ANDY BROWN: All these folks try to do things legally. They try to hire, you know, through legal processes, pay reasonable wages. And then just to change the rules to make it more difficult to adhere to has been frustrating.
ELLIOTT: In a statement, a U.S. Department of Labor spokeswoman said the agency realizes the importance of the crawfish industry to the American economy and is, quote, "looking to identify workable solutions." Brown says this industry and others have long pushed for reforms in the guest worker program, but can't get any traction in Congress. He says public perception doesn't help.
BROWN: If you post this story, there will be way more comments of the uninformed public that think this is stealing an American's job or some other uninformed, you know, public keyboard cowboy that thinks he understands what it takes to get crawfish from the field to his plate. That public misconception is rampant.
ELLIOTT: The bureau and the industry would like to see crawfish processors moved out of the capped H-2B program and into an open-ended agricultural worker system. Democratic Congressman Cleo Fields of Baton Rouge says he's heard from crawfish farmers in his district and would support the change, but doesn't think there's appetite in the Republican-majority Congress. Fields says the Trump administration's hard line on immigration doesn't help.
CLEO FIELDS: You know, I think this administration has put land mines in the way of moving this process forward. And it was only to keep the immigrant worker out.
ELLIOTT: Trump's agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, has said the solution lies with Congress to permanently raise the cap on H-2B visas. So with things stalled in Washington, crawfish plants are trying to salvage what they can of the season.
At Alan Lawson's operation in Crowley, Louisiana, several women are hunched over a stainless steel table picking crawfish meat. It's a tiny fraction of the 125 migrants who would typically be working during peak crawfish season.
LORENA AGUILAR: I am worried.
ELLIOTT: That's Lorena Aguilar, who manages the peeling room. She says she hasn't had enough workers to keep up with orders this year, and the ones who come back here year after year have found jobs elsewhere now.
AGUILAR: If we going to be needing people next season, I don't know what we're going to do.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: You get them back.
AGUILAR: How are we going to get them back? It's a problem. I mean, they don't let the legal people who come back to work. That's a problem.
ELLIOTT: Lawson says it's frustrating. The people trying to work here through legal means are being caught up in the current sentiment.
LAWSON: I don't know if it's the misconception that these guest workers are bad people. They come here to work. They go to work. They do the jobs. They produce revenue for these American companies. I don't really know how or why this has gotten such a black eye.
ELLIOTT: With all the talk of using tariffs to restore domestic manufacturing, Lawson says, this does the opposite. If Louisiana can't produce, imported crawfish will flood the market. And he says no one is listening.
LAWSON: We have politicians that are in Washington. And I'm not going to name any names. I'm not throwing anybody under the bus, but they're so disconnected from what's happening in rural America.
ELLIOTT: Lawson says he's lost confidence in the ability of elected officials to solve this crawfish worker shortage.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Crowley, Louisiana. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
