Crabs are a summer tradition for many Maryland families, but prices may be up this year, depending on whether the state’s seafood businesses win a federal lottery for visas for foreign workers. That visa system, local restaurant owners say, “needs an update.” Jack Brooks, co-owner of the J.M. Clayton Co., is a veteran of the Maryland seafood industry. His family has been in the business since his great-grandfather started the Cambridge-based company in 1890. Staffing shortages because of a national visa system for international workers, which Brooks calls “broken,” are putting the bay’s businesses in jeopardy, seafood industry members say.
