April 10, 2025 — U.S. senators are once again pushing legislation that would exempt temporary migrant seafood workers from counting against the national cap for H2-B visas, ensuring the industry can hire the seasonal workforce it needs.
“Virginia’s seafood industry relies on seasonal, H2-B workers to help meet demand during peak season,” U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) said in a statement. “Without this workforce, many of Virginia’s seafood processors would simply have to close up shop.”
January 27, 2022 — The Virginia Port Authority will receive a $20 million grant from the Department of Transportation to make improvements to Portsmouth Marine Terminal to turn it into a staging area to support the building of 180 wind turbines 27 to 42 miles off the Virginia Beach coast.
Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine made the announcement Jan. 13 and said in a joint statement that “this funding is a recognition of the Commonwealth’s leadership in this space and will go a long way toward establishing Virginia as a hub for offshore wind development along the East Coast.”
The money came from the Department of Transportation’s Port Infrastructure Development Program, a competitive discretionary grant program run by the Maritime Administration. Warner, Kaine and Rep. Bobby Scott co-signed a letter to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in support of the port’s grant application.
December 15, 2020 — A bipartisan group of lawmakers Monday offered Congress a double dose of compromise to end months of gridlock over Covid-19 relief talks as the year and unemployment benefits for 12 million Americans run out.
The Problem Solvers Caucus, a 50-member group made up of moderate House Democrats and Republicans, have been chipping away at the months-long stalemate in Congress since September. Just two weeks ago, the caucus formally introduced a $908 billion proposal to shore up the U.S. economy, but it gained little traction.
On Monday, however, the caucus rolled out a new plan to break up the massive bill into two smaller parts with tailored features that might make passage slightly easier should the measures actually come up for a vote.
The first bill proposed by the caucus totals $748 billion and would extend unemployment benefits for another 16 weeks and to the tune of $300 in weekly supplemental aid. The CARES Act stimulus package passed in the spring offered $600 in unemployment benefits.
July 6, 2020 — Four U.S. senators representing the Chesapeake Bay region wrote a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Wednesday, 1 July, urging him to invest COVID-19 funding to the area’s shellfish farmers whose businesses have been greatly affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
The letter, written by Virginia’s U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Maryland’s U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, all Democrats, asks Perdue to use some of the USD 16 billion (EUR 14.2 billion) appropriated through the CARES Act to purchase oysters and clams from Chesapeake-based aquaculture businesses.
February 25, 2020 — The U.S. seafood industry is on the verge of getting some good news as the Wall Street Journal has reported that the Department of Homeland Security plans to authorize an additional 45,000 H-2B visas.
H-2B visa allow non-agricultural businesses to fill seasonal jobs with immigrant labor. The program is vital for seafood processors, who claim they cannot find enough domestic workers to handle their needs.
February 12, 2019 — In the latest effort to remove Virginia from offshore drilling plans, the state’s Democratic representatives in Congress are pushing federal officials to revoke seismic testing permits that include the waters off Hampton Roads.
In a letter sent Tuesday to the heads of the departments of Commerce and the Interior, the Virginia delegation said the Trump administration’s draft five-year energy plan “runs counter to the explicit wishes of coastal communities up and down the Atlantic that would be at risk from offshore drilling and exploration.”
The appeal was spearheaded by U.S. Rep. A. Donald McEachin of the 4th district, but the nine signatories include Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Hampton Roads Congress members Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, 3rd district, and Elaine G. Luria, 2nd district.
The letter calls on the administration to rescind five Incidental Harassment Authorization permits issued last November by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and to remove Virginia’s offshore area from the president’s controversial 2019-2024 offshore energy plan.
With IHA permits, energy companies can conduct seismic surveys to see where and how much oil and gas is buried in the seabed.