Collins, King Welcome Announcement That USCIS Is Accepting Additional H2-B Visas Requests
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Angus King welcomed an announcement from the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service (USCIS), a component of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), that the agency is accepting additional H2-B visa applications for immigrant workers with a start date between April 1 and September 30, 2015.
“As peak tourism season gets underway in Maine, many of our small business rely on seasonal workers from around the world to help bring economic activity to the state,” said Senators Collins and King in a joint statement. “This announcement that USCIS is accepting more H-2B visa requests is good news for Maine businesses that may need additional help during this busy time.”
H-2B visas, which certify immigrants to work temporarily in the United States, are heavily relied upon in Maine’s many tourism communities that are in need of seasonal, temporary workers. USCIS manages H-2B visa petitions to make sure that enough visa beneficiaries have been approved to meet the 66,000 visa cap established by Congress. It can be difficult to estimate in advance how many beneficiaries of an approved H-2B petition will actually seek H-2B status or eventually be issued an H-2B visa by the State Department.
USCIS works to reasonably estimate the number of petitions it may approve before the 66,000 cap is reached, and in April, the agency announced that it had accepted and approved a sufficient number of H-2B visa petitions to meet the cap. However, after collaborating with the State Department to monitor visa issuances, USCIS determined that there are still H-2B visas available for the second half of Fiscal Year 2015.
Earlier this spring, Collins and King wrote letters to the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) and USCIS to resume issuing H-2B visas after a judgment from a U.S. District court in Florida against USDOL caused visa processing to be suspended. Following those letters in mid-March, DHS announced that H-2B visa issuance would resume.
