January 14, 2008

USCIS Reaches H-2B Cap for Second Half of Fiscal Year 2008

On January 3, 2008, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that as of January 2, 2008 it had received a sufficient number of petitions to reach the federally mandated H-2B cap for the second half of Fiscal Year 2008 (FY2008).  More specifically, January 2, 2008 is determined to be the “final receipt date,” the date on which enough cap-subject petitions were received to reach the cap of 33,000 H-2B workers for the second half of FY2008.  U.S. employers in a number of industries use the H-2B visa category to fill the need for non-agricultural temporary or seasonal workers when there are not enough U.S. workers available.

A computer-generated random selection process will be applied to all petitions subject to the cap and received on January 2, 2008 to select the number of petitions needed to meet the cap.  Cap subject petitions not randomly selected will be rejected and filing fees will be returned.  Additionally, USCIS will reject petitions for new H-2B workers seeking employment start dates prior to October 1, 2008 that arrive after January 2, 2008.   

Petitions for workers who are currently in H-2B status do not count towards the cap.  Therefore, petitions filed to extend the stay, change the terms of employment and extend the stay or to allow current H-2B workers to change or add employers and extend their stay will continue to be receipted and processed.