From NTRA
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Aug. 21, 2021) — United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently announced that it had received enough petitions for returning workers to reach the additional 22,000 H-2B visas made available through the FY 2021 H-2B supplemental visa temporary final rule and would reject and return any cap-subject petitions for H-2B returning workers received after August 13. USCIS also announced that it would return any accompanying fees with these petitions.
The FY 2021 H-2B supplemental visa temporary final rule published in May offered employers 22,000 supplemental H-2B visas for FY 2021. Of these, 6,000 were reserved for nationals of the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala and 16.000 for returning workers. Although the USCIS announced that they had received enough petitions for the 16,000 visas initially made available for returning workers, it did not receive enough to reach the 6,000 allocated for workers from the Northern Triangle countries. In late July, USCIS began accepting petitions for those remaining H-2B visas.
“As we have seen in prior years, the demand for H-2B visa workers is high,” said NTRA president and CEO Alex Waldrop. “The FY 2021 H-2B supplemental visa temporary rule was helpful in offering some relief for those employers who petitioned for returning workers, but the H-2B visa program continues to present challenges for many, including horse trainers.”
The H-2B visa guest worker program is a nonimmigrant visa program used by many industries that need temporary non-agricultural help when domestic workers are unavailable. For the horse racing industry, trainers rely heavily on the H-2B program to fill various backside positions.