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This is frustrating. As an industry, we were elated when the Biden Administration announced the release of 35,000 supplemental H-2B visas back in late March. This marked the most supplemental H-2B visas ever released in a fiscal year and the announcement coincided with the April 1st real date of need. We did know when the announcement was made that the rule was not finalized but an agreement had been made on numbers and we were told a couple of weeks or definitely by the end of April. Well it’s April 29th and we now know that the rule has slipped to the first week of May. Ongoing conversations with DHS indicate that the rule will publish in the middle of next week. It’s very disappointing, unfortunately the rule making process goes through several bureaucratic and legal hurdles, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has actually been very supportive and a champion for this release. At his been typical for the actual rule to lag approximately a month after the announcement for historical context.
At this point emailing your elected officials to urge them to pressure DHS will not impact the timing of the release and we would rather hold our grassroots might for FY 23 as we will ramp up efforts on the appropriations process in the coming weeks heading into the critical mark-ups in June and July.
As soon as we see the rule we will provide an analysis and detail the process.
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