Continued

The agency that oversees the work visa program says it has received enough applications to reach the congressionally mandated H-2B cap for the second six months of fiscal year 2006 (FY 2007).

Congress set a limit of 66,000 H-2B workers for the FY 2006. The H-2B visa program allows U.S. employers to request foreign workers to fill a one-time, peak load, intermittent, or seasonal need for labor when no workers are available in the local job force.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says that March 16, 2007 was the "final receipt date" for new H-2B worker petitions requesting employment start dates prior to April 1, 2007. The agency will apply a computer-generated random selection process to all petitions which are subject to the cap and were received on March 16, 2007. The process will select the number of petitions needed to meet the cap. USCIS will reject all cap-subject petitions not randomly selected. USCIS will also reject petitions for new H-2B workers

Small Business, a coalition of business owners relying upon seasonal immigrant labor to serve their customers is is lobbying lawmakers to “recapture” H-2B visas that were unused during the period of 1991 to 2004. The total of unused H-2B visas is approximately 500,000 (this is the difference between the 66,000 H-2B visas authorized each year and the number of H-2B visas actually used – statistics are from the USCIS Annual Report).

VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW


"Returning workers" are exempt from H-2B cap limitations. In order to qualify, the worker must have counted against the H-2B numerical cap between October 1, 2002 and September 30, 2005. Any worker not certified as a "returning worker" is subject to the numerical limitations for the relevant fiscal year. Petitions received after the "final receipt date" which contain a combination of "returning workers" and workers subject to the H-2B cap will not be rejected, and petitioning employers will receive partial approvals for those aliens who qualify as "returning workers" if otherwise approvable

The program was started in 1990. Last year was the first year the worker cap was reached, which happened in March, just five months into the federal government’s fiscal year. This year the cap was reached in January. Once the cap is reached, no more H-2B workers can come into the country through the federal fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

Because a company cannot apply for workers more than 120 days before they are needed, some businesses, specifically those that need workers later in the fiscal year, were locked out.