Crab Pickers and Gardeners are in "Short Supply"???

...and we need to a different and higher minimum wage law that varies in different states from the federal government to regulate their wages so that Lousiana can't out-compete foreign workers temporarily in Maryland??? Perhaps we should just cancel the H-2B Visa program... oh wait. That might force our intellectual elites to hire neighborhood kids to cut their grass instead of "legal" temporary Mexican workers (after all, politicans DO have to run for office and having an "illegal immigrant" gardener just WON'T do). We can't have that. And American kids would demand more money....

What's next, a special H-2B Visa for hiring jockeys to help maintain Maryland's already heavily subsidized horse racing industry? Where does it end?

No, I doubt they'll need many foreign jockeys... unless of course the jockey's began preparing and serving meals at the Maryland Jockey Club.

from the Baltimore Sun

Unable to get a response from the Department of Labor about a new, higher wage requirement for seasonal foreign workers employed in Eastern Shore seafood plants, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said Friday that she had taken her case to the White House.

The Maryland Democrat wrote White House Chief of Staff William Daley, asking the Obama administration to intervene to delay new requirements that would raise the hourly rate of the foreign workers who come to the U.S. to pick crabs and shuck oysters. Business owners have threatened that they will have to close if the higher wages take effect.

The U.S. allows 66,000 foreigners to come to the country each year under what is known as the H-2B visa program. The temporary workers are hired for seasonal industries such as crab picking, oyster shucking or landscaping. They are required to return home once the season is over.

Labor Department officials proposed higher wages for H-2B workers in January after a federal court struck down guidelines for the program crafted by the Bush administration. Under the new rules, workers in Maryland who now make $7.25 an hour would receive $9.24, according to the industry. The new wages will take effect after Sept. 30 – in the middle of this year’s crab season.

“The wage rule was drafted without regard for or consultation with the industries it would affect,” Mikulski wrote in the letter. “I’m for everyone making an honest living and an honest wage, but I will not support the federal government changing the rules of the game in the middle of the tide for these watermen.”

Yep. THAT would just be "racist"? Update 9/21