Report criticizes treatment of Mexican women recruited to pick Md. crabs: Hundreds of Mexican women who travel to Maryland's Eastern Shore every summer to pick crabs are isolated and sometimes exploited by employers and recruiters, according to a report that urges changes to a U.S. guest-worker program. The report, released Wednesday by American University and the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, reflects interviews with 43 of the 1,000 or so women who worked at 11 crab companies last year. They described being charged illegal fees by recruiters in Mexico and enduring substandard working conditions in Maryland.
The women, few of whom spoke English, said they lived in housing with backed-up sewage and no working stove, lacked transportation to buy groceries or seek medical care, were not trained for their jobs or told how their paychecks and taxes were handled, and had a hard time picking enough pounds of crabmeat to make minimum wage.
