United States | H-2B visa cap reached for remainder of FY 2025

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it received enough petitions to meet the H-2B visa cap for the second half of fiscal year (FY) 2025 and that eligible petitions for supplemental visas must be received by Sept. 15, 2025.

Key Points:

• The H-2B visa cap for the first half of FY 2025 was reached in January.
• March 5, 2025, was the final receipt date for new cap-subject H-2B petitions for the second half of FY 2025. Any new cap-subject H-2B petitions received after March 5, 2025, will be rejected.
• To qualify for the 64,716 supplemental visas, petitions must be received at the filing location designated at the time of filing, which is currently the Texas Service Center, by Sept. 15, 2025.

Additional Information: On Dec. 2, 2024, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor jointly published a temporary final rule increasing the numerical limit (or cap) on H-2B nonimmigrant visas by up to 64,716 additional visas for all of FY 2025. Supplemental visas are available only to U.S. businesses that are suffering irreparable harm or will suffer impending irreparable harm without the ability to employ all the H-2B workers requested in their petition. Of the 64,716 additional visas, 44,716 are available only for certain returning workers. The remaining 20,000 visas are set aside for nationals of Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras who are exempt from the returning worker requirement.

Refer to the Temporary Increase in H-2B Nonimmigrant Visas for FY 2025 page for more details, including who can petition for supplemental visas and other filing information.

This alert has been provided by the BAL U.S. Practice Group.

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