H-2B Cap for First Half of Fiscal Year 2014 Reached United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on March 14, 2014 that it had received enough H-2B petitions to reach the congressionally mandated cap for the first half of Fiscal Year (FY) 2014. An H-2B visa is a temporary work visa for foreign workers with a job offer for seasonal, non-agricultural work in the US. The H2B visa program is open to nationals of countries designated by the United States Secretary of Homeland Security and is capped at 66,000 visas per fiscal year, with 33,000 to be allocated for employment beginning in the 1st half of the fiscal year (October 1 - March 31) and 33,000 to be allocated for employment beginning in the 2nd half of the fiscal year (April 1 - September 30). Any unused numbers from the first half of the fiscal year will be made available for use by employers seeking to hire H-2B workers during the second half of the fiscal year. There is no carry over of unused H-2B numbers from one fiscal year to the next. According to the announcement, March 14, 2014 is the final receipt date for new H-2B worker petitions requesting an employment start date before April 1, 2014. The final receipt date is the date when USCIS has received enough cap-subject petitions to reach the limit of 33,000 H-2B workers for the first six months of FY 2014. This means that there are no longer any spots available from the first half of FY 2014 to carry over to the second half of FY 2014. As the cap have been reached, USCIS will not accept either new H-2B petitions that request an employment start date before April 1, 2014 or the petitions that were received after March 14, 2014.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 06:19:27 +0000
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