Louisiana’s crawfish industry feels the pinch of limits on foreign workers
Juan Antonio harvests crawfish traps in a crawfish pond in Crowley, La., Thursday, March 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) 2026-03-26T04:02:27Z CROWLEY, La. (AP) — Spring is peak season in Louisiana for crawfish, the hard-shelled star of outdoor parties.
But a shortage of foreign workers is dampening the mood.
Deep in Louisiana’s bayous, where crawfish production is a $300 million industry that is a key ingredient for backyard boils and buttery etouffees served in New Orleans’ French Quarter, operators are fuming over labor struggles and pointing fingers at President Donald Trump’s administration over what they say has been a failure to authorize enough guest foreign workers.
The shortages add to a list of industries in the U.S. that rely on seasonal foreign labor, including landscaping and construction , whose struggle to fill jobs has been exacerbated during the Trump administration’s wider clampdown on legal avenues for immigration.
In Louisiana, the need for crawfish workers has strained an industry that is a symbol of state pride and frustrated Republican officeholders, many of whom broadly support Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda but say their pleas for more legal laborers have gone unanswered. “People have built businesses around these workers and this year we can’t get them,” said Alan Lawson, who runs a crawfish production facility in the rural town of Crowley. “This industry would not exist without it because the American people don’t want to do the jobs we’re offering.” Large-scale crawfish producers use guest workers, many from Mexico and Central America, to shell and freeze the freshwater catch that is often pulled from swampy rice fields.
They are hired on H-2B visas for nonfarming jobs and are allowed to stay in the U.S. for less than a year after businesses first offer the jobs to Americans.
The Department of Homeland Security is required to release 66,000 H-2B visas each year and can release nearly double that amount.
But that process happened later than usual this year — after Louisiana’s crawfish season had already begun.
DHS did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The Department of Labor said it respects the crawfish industry and importance to the U.S. economy, and that the agency “has been actively engaging with industry stakeholders to help address workforce needs and identify workable solutions.” But even if guest workers arrive before crawfish season ends around June, Lawson says, the damage is done.
Restau
原文链接: AP News