NOT OF THEORETICAL INTEREST ONLY. Seasonal foreign workers in short supply this year.

For four generations, Robin Hall's family overcame competition, bad weather and shifting economic tides that threatened to swamp their Chesapeake Bay crab-processing business.

Why is this year different?

But 2005 could be the year the Maryland business goes under — vanquished not by the forces the Halls managed to outlast, but by a U.S. labor visa program they viewed as salvation in their battle.

Fierce competition claimed all the available visas by Jan. 3, creating a crisis that's blocked G.W. Hall & Son Seafood from rehiring foreign workers who had returned season after season.

It's not just crab-shuckers, either.

From Hamptons resorts to Western foresters, from Midwestern tourist centers to Sun Belt landscaping firms, thousands of businesses are being squeezed by the same, unprecedented labor crunch this year as they scramble to hire employees needed for busy spring and summer seasons.

For more than a decade, they have relied on foreign workers with H-2B visas, a 1990 immigration program that allowed businesses to look outside U.S. borders for workers to fill temporary, non-agricultural jobs Americans increasingly shun.

But in 2005, amid rising business demand, the 66,000 visas authorized each federal fiscal year were gone by Jan. 3, barely three months after the program's annual start. The door slammed shut so early that many business owners say they are unable to hire the foreign workers they recruit to shuck oysters, plant trees, cut lawns, staff kitchens, wait tables and fill dozens of other jobs.

You think there isn't going to be a temptation for some of these companies to make deals with the smugglers of illegal immigrants? And that, with more oyster-shuckers and foresters in the pool of illegal immigrants, there won't be more reason for the government to regularize those illegals?

Perhaps there are some unexplored avenues by which high-technology can be used to complement skilled domestic workers with better opportunity costs as oyster-shuckers and tree-planters. But if you've just won the Chicago-Mackinac regatta those victory drinks might be a bit slow in coming.

On Michigan's Mackinac Island, a Midwest vacation mecca, Patti Ann Moskwa says she didn't get approvals for the 15 visas she'd sought for workers to fill jobs at Horn's Gaslight Bar before the federal program maxed out.

"It's not like we're not trying to hire U.S. citizens. I would if I could," Moskwa says.

But in 10 years of running newspaper ads for seasonal jobs, Moskwa says she has received only three applications. Her recruiting trips to colleges came up dry. "It probably means I'll be washing a lot more dishes," Moskwa says.

Remind me again ... college students are an oppressed proletariat burdened by excessive tuitions and overpriced textbooks, providing employers with an elastic supply of dishwashers. (Oh, that's a different rant.) The article provides good capsule summaries of the principal differing perspectives in the immigration policy debate.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors tighter borders, says allowing firms to use cheaper, low-skilled foreign workers in place of American workers represents a questionable government subsidy. "Immigration represents a thumb on the scale on the side of employers," he says. "Are these businesses a compelling national interest that deserve a federal subsidy?"

That leads to the induced-innovation argument: does the cheap labor subsidy hamper economic growth by preserving more labor-intensive methods of production?

Joanna Hedvall, an analyst at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says the visa program is a business issue, not an immigration matter. She says the foreign workers who participate enter the country legally, stay temporarily and pay taxes on their earnings. There have been few complaints about workers overstaying visas, Hedvall says.

And, to the extent that such workers can be vetted, and can enter and leave without let or hindrance, they're less likely to become illegal migrants by overstaying. It would be useful to know the proportion of illegal immigrants that remain in the underground economy in the U.S. rather than risk repeated border crossings.

"This is a far better system than having businesses hiring undocumented workers," says Melinda Rubin, a New York immigration lawyer seeking visas for temporary foreign workers hoping to return to summer jobs in the Hamptons, on Long Island's East End. "It puts more money in our tax coffers, and it's a good form of foreign aid because the people who work here bring money home."

Yes, immigrant remittances provide substantial resources to many developing countries. Catch that location, though ... evidently working ones way through the Ivies is just Not Done in the East End any more.