The Departments of Homeland Security and Labor published a joint final rule in the Federal Register on May 8, 2019, launching the process for issuance of 30,000 additional seasonal non-agricultural H-2B visas for positions set to begin by September 30, 2019. Employers can now file to request the additional visas.
The rule clarifies that the 30,000 additional FY 2019 H-2B visas will be available “for those American businesses that attest to a level of need such that, if they do not receive all of the workers under the cap increase, they are likely to suffer irreparable harm, in other words, suffer a permanent and severe financial loss…..In addition….employers may only request these supplemental visas for specified H-2B returning workers….who were issued H-2B visas or were otherwise granted H-2B status in FY 2016, 2017, or 2018.”
If past is prologue, demand will far exceed supply, triggering a lottery. Last year, within 5 days after the Federal Register notice appeared, USCIS received petitions for over 29,000 H-2B visas and conducted a lottery to randomly select the petitions to process for the 15,000 additional H-2B visas.
While 30,000 additional H-2B visas for the remainder of FY2019 is an improvement over the 15,000 additional visas provided in the past few fiscal years, but as discussed here, the Department of Homeland Security could have issued up to 69,320 additional H-2B visas before the end of FY 2019 under the terms of the Congressional fix, but chose not to.
Congress needs to make a permanent fix to remove or substantially and permanently increase the H-2B visa cap so that Maine’s seasonal employers can have predictability when trying to meet their seasonal employment needs.
For a variety of perspectives on the H-2B program in general and on the additional visas, see this article in the Wall Street Journal.