Visa Lawyer Blog: USCIS Announces that the H-2B cap has been reached for the first half of fiscal year 2025 — September 23, 2024
On September 19, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has received enough petitions to reach the mandatory numerical cap on new H-2B visas for nonagricultural workers for the first half of fiscal year 2025.
As a result, USCIS will reject any new cap-subject H-2B petitions received after September 18th that request an employment start date before April 1, 2025.
USCIS will continue to accept H-2B petitions that are exempt from the congressionally mandated cap, including:
Current H-2B workers in the United States who extend their stay, change employers, or change the terms and conditions of their employment;
- Fish roe processors, fish roe technicians, and/or supervisors of fish roe processing; and
- Workers performing labor or services in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and/or Guam from Nov. 28, 2009, until Dec. 31, 2029.
- The H-2B visa program allows U.S. employers to recruit foreign workers for temporary nonagricultural jobs. Congress sets an annual numerical limitation on the issuance of H-2B visas at 66,000 per fiscal year.
33,000 are reserved for workers who begin employment in the first half of the fiscal year (Oct. 1-March 31) and the remaining 33,000 (plus any unused numbers from the first half of the fiscal year) are reserved for workers who begin employment in the second half of the fiscal year (April 1-September 30).
To learn more about this announcement, please click here.
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