Rolling the H-2B stone up the Hill again After a 35-day partial government shutdown, Congress passed a temporary three-week spending bill without — you guessed it — H-2B reform language. It was a long shot that H-2B would be included in the temporary spending bill, but advocates for the program, including AmericanHort and the National Association of Landscape Professionals put... read more
The Department of Labor (DOL)’s online portal for H-2B seasonal work visa applications is now fully operational. The online portal, called iCERT, crashed in the early hours of New Year’s Day due to overwhelming demand. The system came back online on Monday, Jan. 7. U.S. lawmakers cap the number of H-2B visas available every year at 66,000, divided evenly between... read more
A tentative agreement to double the number of H-2B visas and implement other reforms to the guest worker program did not move forward in December, as hoped, with critical federal budget bills. The package of H-2B reforms was slated to be included with a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has been without a fiscal year... read more
Last Friday, Dec. 7, funding for several federal agencies was due to run out unless Congress passed a set of appropriations bills, which we hoped would contain reforms to the H-2B guest worker program. Congress defers action Unfortunately, the death of former President George H. W. Bush and his state funeral last week brought official activity in Washington to a... read more
In September, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced a nationwide initiative to strengthen compliance in the landscape industry with the labor provisions of the H-2B temporary visa program. It was almost identical to a release issued the previous week targeting the hospitality industry. The compliance will focus on: Confirming an insufficient number of U.S. employees are qualified and available... read more
With the Nov. 6 midterm elections just days away, what can we expect come Jan. 1 in the new Congress? The consensus of the pollsters and pundits is the U.S. House of Representatives will flip from Republican control to Democratic. At this writing several days out from the midterms, the political website fivethirtyeight.com puts the probability that this flip will... read more
