Employers that rely on the H-2B seasonal foreign worker program are beginning 2019 in a bind.
The Labor Department’s electronic filing system for the visas, iCERT, went down early Jan. 1, leaving employers unable to start the process for obtaining foreign labor for the spring season. The DOL has promised an update on the system’s status on Jan. 3.
The system outage was the result of massive demand, with employers requesting 97,800 H-2B workers even though only 33,000 visas are available, the DOL said in a Jan. 2 update on its website.
The iCERT crash has left thousands of employers ...