The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that due to a low H-2B visa issuance rate, it has reopened the fiscal year 2009 H-2B visa petition filing period to allow employers to file additional visa petitions for qualified H-2B temporary foreign nonagricultural workers. On January 7, 2009, USCIS announced that it accepted and approved a sufficient number of H-2B visa petitions to meet the congressionally mandated annual cap of 66,000. However, the Department of State (DOS) reported that to date, it has only issued 40,640 H-2B visas for fiscal year 2009. Accordingly, USCIS will immediately accept new H-2B visa petitions until the annual cap is reached.

Please contact your Wolfsdorf Immigration Law Group professional at I-800-VISA-LAW or via email to VisaLaw@Wolfsdorf.com if you have any questions about filing an H-2B visa petition or other immigration related matters.