H-2B visa is for non-agricultural guest workers employed mostly by the hospitality industry in the US.
The Donald Trump administration silently walked back on a lesser-targeted visa program and restored its quota after reducing it, as the president’s private businesses depend largely on workers coming to the US on that visa. While the H-1B visa program is much vilified for abuses, frauds, the H-2B visa program allows guest workers to come to the US to work for a limited period of time. These are for non-agriculture workers who are employed by hotels and similar companies. Wall Street Journal reported that late last year, the administration announced that it would cut H-2B visas by half. But the administration quietly reverted to the existing quota in January after a crucial meeting in Florida. Bernd Lembcke, a former manager of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and Peter Petrina, a long-time Mar-a-Lago member, convinced the president that the hospitality industry needed more workers ahead of the winter and spring peak tourism season. Trump’s businesses have also relied on this visa program to hire temporary foreign workers. The report said Trump took the lobbying seriously and called his advisers and asked them to expand the allotment of H-2B visa program. As the WSJ reached out to the White House on the swift changes in the H-2B visa program, they said it was done because the administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration took away work authorization for more than a million immigrants by terminating their temporary legal statuses. “The Trump Administration’s number one priority is protecting American jobs and wages, while adequately responding to the demands of President Trump’s rapidly growing economy,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said.
What is H-2B visa?
Since 2016, Congress allotted 33,000 visas for winter and summer hiring seasons for a total of 66,000. The law allows the president to nearly double that number if he determines the economy could use the extra visa slots.This program is used by landscapers, fisheries and vacation towns as they can’t find enough Americans willing to work only for a few months in a year. The Trump administration announced December 31 that it would only grant 35,000 additional visas for fiscal year 2026, far fewer than the nearly 65,000 maximum allowed by Congress. Two weeks after the January meeting at Trump’s Florida golf club, the administration changed course, saying it would authorize an additional 64,716 H-2B visas for the fiscal year, WSJ reported.
