January 13, 2026 — Some of Alaska’s largest pollock processors are abandoning a foreign worker visa program that once supplied up to half their workforce, citing rising costs and uncertainty under stricter immigration policies.
Tom Enlow is the president and CEO of UniSea Seafoods, Unalaska’s largest seafood processor. He said the company is moving away from the H-2B visas to save money on an inconsistent system.
“The H-2B program, I think was good for Alaska at a time when we really needed them, you know, during the pandemic, and little bit pre-pandemic, but really it’s cost prohibitive to bring workers all the way from Eastern Europe to Alaska,” Enlow said.
The H-2B visa program allows employers to bring foreign workers to the U.S. to fill temporary non-agricultural jobs during shortages. The visas can be difficult to obtain. Companies have to first show they can’t fill the jobs, then they have to apply, and then the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Labor issue the visas through a lottery system.
Enlow said the processing plant moved back to a 100% domestic workforce this summer and will do the same for the upcoming “A” season — a major pollock season that starts later this month and brings thousands of workers to Dutch Harbor.
The main reason for that is cost. He said the Trump administration’s approach to hiring foreign workers has also made a difficult and expensive process even more complicated.
“It doesn’t make for good planning for processors, when you are bringing 200 or 300 people in from Eastern Europe and you don’t know for sure if you’re going to get supplemental visas, if [they’re] going to get approved in time, if they’re going to be in Alaska when you need them, when the season’s started,” he said.
UniSea started participating in the H-2B program in 2019, and prior to that, the company employed 100% U.S. domestic workers, according to Enlow. Some of those were green card holders or permanent residents, living in the U.S. — most from the Philippines.
When the company was actively using the special visas, as many as half of UniSea’s workers were foreign.
The company still employs a handful of Ukrainian employees who were hired through a special program designed to help those who were displaced from the Russian invasion, and will continue to work for the processor, Enlow said.
“They’re not bound by some of the rules and restrictions of the H-2B program,” he said. “They can stay extended periods of time. They can work full time, year round, they don’t have to be necessarily processors. They can work in other jobs, in other areas.”
UniSea isn’t the only regional processor filling jobs with American workers. Trident Seafoods — one of the largest seafood processors in the nation — said it employs almost an exclusively domestic workforce.
A spokesperson for the company said the processor — which has facilities across Alaska, from the Aleutians to Southeast and Bristol Bay — has been moving away from the H-2B program since 2023, in an attempt to strengthen long-term, local employment.
Westward Seafoods, another shore-based processor in Unalaska, would not provide information on employment data.