1/4/2008 - H-2B Cap Reached

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced that the H-2B cap has been reached for the first part of the 2008 fiscal year with cases received on January 2, 2008. The announcement comes on the very first day of the fiscal year.

According to the announcement, any cases received after January 2, 2008 cannot be offered an available H-2B with a start date any time before October 1, 2008. With regard to new H-2B cases received on January 2, a lottery will determine which ones receive a remaining H-2B visa.

Petitions will be accepted as of April 1 for H-2B visas beginning October 1, 2008, as these cases would be counted under the 33,000 H-2B cap for the first half of the 2009 fiscal year. Case requesting later start dates are, as always, accepted six months in advance of the requested start date.

NOTE: As of this writing, congress has not reauthorized the "returning worker" provision for 2008. This provision allowed workers applying for fiscal year 2007 H-2Bs to be considered exempt from the numerical cap if they had been counted against the H-2B cap in fiscal 2004, 2005 or 2006.

Without reauthorization of the returning worker provision, all H-2B applicants, returning workers included, had to be counted against the cap - thus causing the capo to be reached so early. If this provision is extended, H-2B usage will be recalculated and H-2Bs for the first half of fiscal 2008 will likely again become available.

It is therefore critical that everyone contact their representatives in Washington to urge extension of the returning worker provisions. You can locate contact information for your Senators by entering your zip code below: