FISHING CREEK, Maryland (AFP) – Veronica Ramirez-Rangel’s fingers moved quickly, piercing the hard shell of a Maryland blue crab with a knife, scooping out the cooked flesh and placing it in plastic containers.

Over and over, Ramirez repeated the same movement until she had “picked” 18 pounds (eight kilograms) of crabmeat, which at $2.50 a pound meant she had earned $45.

This is the fifth year that 37-year-old Ramirez-Rangel has left her family behind and joined hundreds of Mexican women who come here on guestworkers’ visas to pick crab. At a stainless steel table nearby, Candida Ponce-Recendis, 39, has been coming for 15 years.

Now, the women fear their source of income could be in danger after a report by the Washington College of Law and Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (Center for Migrant Rights) alleged that foreign crab pickers live and work in dire conditions and are pushing US workers out of jobs.

Forty-three women were interviewed for the report, which says it has documented “the experience of living in Maryland and working in the crab industry.”

One of the women, Elisa Martinez, recounted at the launch of the report last week how she had come to the United States from Mexico on an H-2B guest worker visa in 2000 to work as a crab picker, lured by a Mexican recruiter’s promise of “work and a nice house to live in.”

There was no house.