Daniel Costa for the Economic Policy Institute: I don’t doubt how productive and valuable Mexican immigrant crab pickers in Maryland are. Their bosses say they’re the heart of the crab industry. But upon closer inspection, it seems the seafood companies don’t really think this important work is worth a fair wage. The companies have lobbied tenaciously to make sure that the legal and regulatory framework of the H-2B visa program allows them to legally underpay their workers compared to what they would have to pay to attract workers in the free market …

Maryland crab is delicious, if you can afford it. At $30 to $50 per pound, it’s certainly not cheap. That’s why I was curious to know just how much these H-2B workers were valued by their employers. I looked up the H-2B disclosure data from the Department of Labor for two … seafood processors … Russell Hall Seafood and G.W. Hall and Sons. According to those records, in fiscal 2017, the Labor Department certified 50 H-2B jobs for Russell Hall Seafood and 30 for G.W. Hall and Sons.