Update: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) met its congressionally mandated H-2B Temporary Nonagricultural Worker visa cap in mid-May. This means it won’t accept any new petitions that request an employment start date before Oct. 1, 2016. Learn more about the cap here.
Unlike the in-demand H-1B work visa, USCIS splits the 66,000 H-2B cap into two equal parts, accommodating workers whose employment dates start at different times of the year. USCIS recently reported that the cap for the first half of the fiscal year, Oct. 1 to March 31, is nearly met.
On Feb. 22, the date of the last official count, 26,384 out of 33,000 available slots were filled. However, there are an additional 10,304 waiting to be processed. VISANOW-affiliated attorney Earl Reyes believes the cap will be closed any day now, and employers looking to file a petition for H-2B workers will have to make other arrangements for their unfilled positions. He does note that any unprocessed petitions may be carried over to the second half of the fiscal year, which opens in June for workers with employment dates ranging from April 1 to Sept. 30.
Learn more about the H-2B visa in VISANOW’s ABCs of Immigration.
Read our immigration blog weekly for more information on the H-2B visa and other employment-based visa categories.
