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We’re just going to have to make the best of a bad situation.

Aubrey Vincent, sales manager for Lindy’s Seafood, a crab wholesaler on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Lindy's and other "picking houses" rely on seasonal Mexican laborers with H2-B visas to process the crab harvest. But the federal government this year changed the way it distributes those visas, moving from a first-come, first-served system to a lottery. Half the state's crab houses failed to get visas, leaving them without any workers for the upcoming season. One seafood wholesaler previously told the Baltimore Sun that "this is going to cause the price of crab meat to go out of sight. There’s not going to be hardly any Maryland crab meat."

Aubrey Vincent, sales manager for Lindy’s Seafood, a crab wholesaler on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Lindy's and other "picking houses" rely on seasonal Mexican laborers with H2-B visas to process the crab harvest. But the federal government this year changed the way it distributes those visas, moving from a first-come, first-served system to a lottery. Half the state's crab houses failed to get visas, leaving them without any workers for the upcoming season. One seafood wholesaler previously told the Baltimore Sun that "this is going to cause the price of crab meat to go out of sight. There’s not going to be hardly any Maryland crab meat."
 
Zach Patton -- Executive Editor. Zach joined GOVERNING as a staff writer in 2004. He received the 2011 Jesse H. Neal Award for Outstanding Journalism