Department of Homeland Security and Department of Labor issue joint rule supplementing H-2B visa cap.
May 24, 2021
On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Dept. of Labor (DOL) published a joint temporary final rule, making available an additional 22,000 H-2B temporary nonagricultural guest worker visas for the fiscal year 2021. This will be for employers who are likely to suffer irreparable harm without these additional workers. Of these visas, 6,000 are reserved for nationals of the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The supplemental increase allocates 16,000 visas available only to returning H-2B workers from one of the last three fiscal years (fiscal years 2018, 2019, or 2020), and 6,000 visas for Northern Triangle nationals, which are exempt from the returning worker requirement.