Employers seeking H-2B temporary, non-agricultural seasonal worker visas for jobs starting in the first half of fiscal year 2019 (October 1, 2018 to March 30, 2019) can file their Temporary Labor Certification Applications with the Chicago National Processing Center beginning at 12:00 a.m. EST on July 3, 2018.
Because Congress provided for an increase in the number H-2B visas only for the current fiscal year, once again, only 33,000 H-2B visas will be available for the first half of FY2019.
It remains to be seen how many applications will be filed and how quickly the 33,000 visa cap will be reached. As noted previously, receipt of applications will be recorded by the millisecond, to avoid a lottery and to instead process applications in the order received. If past is prologue, we expect the 33,000 visas to be quickly exhausted. USCIS publishes updates on the cap count here. Stay tuned.