The H-2B visa cap is 66,000. It hasn't actually been 66,000 since 2022.
Summary
Congress caps seasonal guest-worker visas at 66,000 a year. For a fourth straight fiscal year, DHS has approved the maximum supplemental top-up the law allows — 64,716 more — nearly doubling the real cap, and billing employers $13.5 million in government fees just to ask for it.
The cap that isn't a cap
The 66,000 figure comes straight from the Immigration and Nationality Act — INA section 214(g)(1)(B), enforced in practice as 33,000 visas for petitions with an April 1 start date and 33,000 for petitions starting October 1. Since 2017, Congress has repeatedly given the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Labor, time-limited authority to raise that number when demand outstrips it. What was framed as an emergency valve has become the default setting: 's own FY2026 temporary final rule, scheduled for publication February 3, 2026 and effective January 30 through September 30, 2026, authorizes "up to, but not more than, an additional 64,716 visas" — the exact figure the department has now used for FY2023, FY2024, FY2025, and FY2026 alike, per the rule's own historical table.
View data as table
| FY 2021 | 22,000 | single supplemental allocation |
|---|---|---|
| FY 2022 | 55,000 | two supplemental allocations, summed |
| FY 2023 | 64,716 | supplemental maximum |
| FY 2024 | 64,716 | supplemental maximum |
| FY 2025 | 64,716 | supplemental maximum |
| FY 2026 | 64,716 | supplemental maximum, up to |
The mechanics run on urgency. Employers qualify only by attesting, under penalty of perjury, that their business is suffering or will imminently suffer "irreparable harm" — permanent, severe financial loss — without the workers. The FY2026 allocation is split into three tranches by start date: 18,490 visas immediately for returning workers starting between January 1 and March 31; 27,736 more for returning workers starting in April; and a final 18,490, open to all workers regardless of prior H-2B history, for May through September starts. Two of the three tranches are closed to first-time H-2B workers entirely — the "emergency" capacity is reserved for employer relationships that already exist.
Who pays for it
None of this is free, and 's own rule says so in dollar terms. Filing a supplemental H-2B petition requires Form I-129, priced on a sliding scale by employer size and whether the beneficiary is named — plus a flat $150 Fraud Prevention and Detection Fee built into every tier, required by 8 U.S.C. 1184(c)(13).
View data as table
| Named, non-small employer or nonprofit | $1,830 | base $1,080 + fraud fee $150 + asylum fee $600 |
|---|---|---|
| Unnamed, non-small employer or nonprofit | $1,330 | base $580 + fraud fee $150 + asylum fee $600 |
| Named, small employer | $990 | base $540 + fraud fee $150 + asylum fee $300 |
| Unnamed, small employer | $910 | base $460 + fraud fee $150 + asylum fee $300 |
| Named nonprofit | $690 | base $540 + fraud fee $150 + asylum fee $0 |
| Unnamed nonprofit | $610 | base $460 + fraud fee $150 + asylum fee $0 |
estimates 4,208 employers will file to use this year's supplemental allocation, and it did the arithmetic on what that costs: $6,528,300 in I-129 filing fees, plus $6,966,920 more from the roughly 93% of petitioners who pay extra for premium processing — $13,495,220 in total transfers from employers to , by the department's own count, for this one allocation. On top of that sits a cost the fee schedule doesn't capture: values the staff and legal time employers spend completing the paperwork at $4.6 million to $6.0 million, using Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for HR specialists and immigration lawyers. The rule itself is explicit that the filing fees are booked as a "transfer," not a cost to society — an accounting choice that keeps $13.5 million in government revenue outside the number regulators use to judge the rule's economic footprint. And because it's issued as a temporary final rule rather than through standard notice-and-comment, is not required to conduct a small-business economic impact analysis on a program whose petitions average 15.38 workers apiece — Table 5's own five-year figure, weighted toward operators well past "small."
The takeaway
- The "emergency" is now the baseline. has authorized the exact same 64,716-visa maximum for four consecutive fiscal years — the real annual H-2B ceiling has been roughly 130,716, not 66,000, since 2023.
- It has a government-quantified price tag. $13.5 million in filing and premium-processing fees transfer to this year alone, plus up to $6 million in employer paperwork time values but doesn't count as a societal cost — for a rule exempt from standard economic-impact review.
- Access still runs through existing employer relationships. Two of three FY2026 tranches are reserved for workers who already held H-2B status in the past three years, and the historical average of 15.38 workers per petition points to established, larger operators as the program's primary users.
All dollar and visa-count figures in this piece are /'s own estimates from the FY2026 H-2B temporary final rule. The $13.5 million and $4.6–6.0 million figures apply specifically to the FY2026 supplemental allocation described here — the incremental cost of using it — not to the H-2B program's full-year budget or the base 66,000-visa cap.
Sources
- /, Exercise of Time-Limited Authority To Increase the Fiscal Year 2026 Numerical Limitation for the H-2B Temporary Nonagricultural Worker Program, temporary final rule, scheduled for Federal Register publication Feb. 3, 2026 — primary source for the statutory cap structure, the 64,716-visa supplemental maximum and its three allocations, the irreparable-harm attestation requirement, Table 5 (supplemental visas by fiscal year, FY2021–FY2025), Table 8 (I-129 fees by petitioner type), and the full cost-benefit analysis ($13,495,220 in transfers; $4.6–6.0 million in opportunity cost; 15.38 beneficiaries per petition). federalregister.gov
- /, Exercise of Time-Limited Authority To Increase the Numerical Limitation for 2025 for the H-2B Temporary Nonagricultural Worker Program, Federal Register, Dec. 2, 2024 — confirms the 64,716-visa supplemental maximum for FY2025. federalregister.gov
- /, Exercise of Time-Limited Authority To Increase the Numerical Limitation for 2024 for the H-2B Temporary Nonagricultural Worker Program, Federal Register, Nov. 17, 2023 — confirms the 64,716-visa supplemental maximum for FY2024. federalregister.gov
- Congressional Research Service, The H-2B Visa and the Statutory Cap (R44306) — background on the 66,000-visa statutory cap under INA section 214(g) and Congress's recurring grants of supplemental-cap authority to since FY2017. congress.gov
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The H-2B visa lets U.S. employers hire foreign workers for seasonal, non-agricultural jobs — landscaping crews, hotel housekeeping, seafood processing, forestry — after the Department of Labor certifies no American worker is available to fill them. Congress wrote a hard number into the statute for how many of these visas can exist in a year: 66,000, split into two 33,000-visa halves. What Congress did not anticipate is that the exception would swallow the rule. Every year since FY2023, the Department of Homeland Security has invoked its emergency authority to add the single largest supplemental allocation it has authorized in that window — the same number, 64,716, four years running — before the official cap is even reached.