The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that it has received sufficient number of petitions to meet the limit for the extra 20,716 H-2B visas allocated for returning workers in the first half of fiscal year 2025.
According to USCIS, the petitions allocated as part of the Fiscal year (FY) 2025 temporary final rule (TFR) that was published on December 2 for returning workers have now been fully submitted.
The final receipt date for petitions requesting these visas was January 7 2025.
The visas were available for workers with start dates on or before March 31st, 2025, under the H-2B supplemental cap temporary final rule.
The rule increased the number of available H-2B visas for the first half of FY 2025.
As of January 7th, 2025, USCIS notified that it had processed enough petitions to meet the cap for returning workers, which allows for the continued employment of nonimmigrant workers in temporary or seasonal positions.
Despite the cap being reached for returning workers, USCIS still accepts petitions for H-2B visas under the country-specific allocation, including 20,000 visas set aside for nationals from Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras.
Workers from these countries are exempt from the returning worker requirement, allowing employers to submit petitions for new workers who meet the criteria.
As of the January 7th deadline, USCIS had received 3,678 petitions for workers from these countries.
USCIS urged petitioners whose workers were not selected for the returning worker allocation to consider applying for the country-specific allocation while visas are still available.
For more details on the supplemental visas available under the FY 2025 H-2B programme, USCIS encourages petitioners to visit the Temporary Increase in H-2B Nonimmigrant Visas for FY 2025 page.
