WASHINGTON : The Biden administration will make an additional 35,000 seasonal-worker visas available to employers ahead of the coming summer hiring season, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday.
The visas are being made available in addition to 33,000 visas already set aside for seasonal employers, such as landscapers, fisheries, resorts and vacation-town vendors, for the summer hiring season. They will be available to employers looking to bring on temporary workers with start dates between April 1 and Sept. 30.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the additional visas were “informed by current demand in the labor market," and would “help to support American businesses and expand legal pathways for workers seeking to come to the United States."
The move marks the largest release of additional visas for the summer season since Congress changed the rules in 2017 governing how many seasonal-worker visas would be made available each year. Last spring, the Biden administration increased the H-2B visa supply by 22,000. And, for the first time, it also released another batch of 20,000 visas for last winter’s hiring season.
Of the 35,000 additional visas announced Thursday, 11,500 will be set aside for applicants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti, four countries with historically high proportions of illegal migration to the U.S. The Biden administration views these visas, despite their limited number, as a piece of its policy response to provide would-be migrants with alternative paths to the U.S. Employers generally lobby against such a carve-out, however, because businesses don’t have established recruiting networks in those countries the way they do with Mexico or Jamaica.
The remainder will be set aside for returning workers from any country.
The seasonal-worker program, known as the H-2B visa program, enables U.S. employers to hire as many as 66,000 temporary foreign workers a year, with the allotments split evenly between the winter and summer seasons. Since 2017, Congress has permitted the department each year to raise that cap by as many as 64,000 additional visas, though neither the Trump nor Biden administrations have approached that limit despite demand.
In order for employers to hire a foreign worker on an H-2B visa, they must first attempt to recruit an American worker and receive certification from the Labor Department that there are none available to do the job. The program comes with requirements on how much employers must pay the workers, so they aren’t paid less than American counterparts, and employers must continue recruiting Americans even after foreign laborers are hired. Farmworkers fall under a separate H-2A visa program, which has no limit set by Congress.
The administration has come under intense pressure from employers and business groups to make the additional visas available sooner to help alleviate labor shortages, which are being felt most acutely in low-wage industries that rely disproportionately on immigrant labor.
Each time the administration releases extra visas, though, it must balance competing interests. Labor unions, who form a key part of President Biden’s support, always fight against the use of foreign labor and say the H-2B visa program as it is currently designed doesn’t give workers recourse to leave abusive or exploitative employers.
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The Department of Homeland Security said it plans to update the seasonal-worker program alongside the release of the additional visas with several policy changes that would address some of these concerns.
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