Stalled Release of Seasonal H-2B Visas Puts Strain on Employers

The Trump administration’s ongoing delay in issuing thousands of H-2B visas has left seasonal industries like landscaping and hospitality uncertain if they’ll have the workers they need in time for the spring work season.

US businesses appeared to hit a statutory cap on the visas for the second half of fiscal 2025 by March 5, immigration attorneys say. That’s when US Citizenship and Immigration Services stopped accepting visa petitions for the work season starting next month.

Companies still in need of foreign labor though are counting on access to more than 32,000 supplemental visas authorized by the Biden administration in a regulation last year. Before they can be claimed, USCIS must make an announcement that the statutory cap was reached. However, seasonal employers and attorneys have been met with radio silence for weeks.

The wait time prompted másLabor, a consulting firm specializing in employment-based visas, to warn this week that the delays are creating uncertainty for businesses and risk disrupting operations.

“We literally have hundreds of customers sitting on the edge of their chair waiting for an announcement so they can plan how they’re going to support their businesses,” said Chris Ball, másLabor’s CEO. “Every day we don’t hear something, makes it worse.”

The delay shows a split within the Trump administration on the seasonal work visas, said Gray Delany, executive director of the Seasonal Employment Alliance. But he said he expects release of the visas to come soon.

President Donald Trump has touted the “largest ever” crackdown on immigration in the US, redirecting resources at multiple agencies to focus on immigration enforcement. And in 2020 he issued an executive order suspending entry through guest worker programs, including H-2B visas.

But Trump also released thousands of the supplemental visas during his first term and his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. has hired housekeepers and food workers through the H-2B program.

“We’ve got pretty good engagement with Trump,” Delany said. “We were able to get through to the right people enough—people who understand it’s a workforce issue, not immigration.”

The 64,716 additional visas added for fiscal year 2025 nearly doubled the 66,000 allowed under an annual statutory cap. It was the third straight year that the Biden administration released all available visas under a supplemental cap authorized by lawmakers to add workers based on tight labor market conditions.

Of those supplemental visas, 20,000 were reserved for workers from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. The rest went to returning workers previously employed in the US through the H-2B program.

USCIS projected that more than 13,000 visas remained for designated countries by the end of February. And 19,000 additional visas would be released for jobs starting in April when the statutory cap is released. Another 5,000 visas are reserved for jobs starting May 15.

Demand for seasonal labor far exceeds the number of visas available under the cap, making the release of supplemental visas critical to many businesses, said Ashley Foret Dees, a partner at BAL Immigration Law.

Typically, we would see within a week an announcement of the cap being met,” she said. “Now here we are three weeks later with employers still waiting.”

Depending on how long the supplemental visas are delayed, it could mean workers arrive late for the season or that employers can’t hire workers needed to fulfill contracts, said Meagan Kirchner, an attorney at Kirchner Law PLLC who works with employers using the H-2B program.

“There’s tremendous economic impact for these companies as well as reputational harm,” Kirchner said.