Even as Alaska experienced a banner year for sockeye salmon, some commercial fishermen had to stop hauling in the fish because there weren’t enough workers to process them.
“Convincing seasonal workers to come to the most remote corner of the United States has never been easy. But this year, immigration policies, difficult labor conditions, and the unpredictability of wild salmon combined into a perfect storm,” says New Food Economy. “Experts estimate that the labor shortage cost Bristol Bay’s fishery tens of millions of dollars in lost profits.”
Each year, seafood companies fly about 4,500 workers into the Bristol Bay area to process the fish; just 15 percent of those workers come from Alaska. While the work isn’t glamorous and injuries are common, in “about five weeks, a processing worker can make $5,000 with minimal expenses,” says New Food Economy.
But few U.S. citizens want to gut fish in isolated processing plants that are often reachable only by boat or plane, and anyone outside the country needs to get an H-2B visa for “non-agricultural seasonal workers.” Moreover, most of the nation’s 66,000 H-2B visas have already been awarded to other states before Alaska’s fishing season starts. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski unsuccessfully called for more visas at a May meeting of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.