Visas will be “available in the coming months” through a line to be published in the Federal Register, the newspaper published by the US government, as confirmed by the US Department of Homeland Security.
The United States on Tuesday announced 22,000 new visas for non-farm workers, including 6,000 for people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, countries that make up Central America’s Northern Triangle, extending the quota set each year. be determined by Congress. .
This was reported in a statement from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which noted that the visas will be prepared in accordance with an executive order from US President Joe Biden on the “ Creation of a address comprehensive regional framework for the causes of migration, manage migration across North and Central America and ensure safe and orderly treatment of asylum seekers at the US border ”.
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National Security Minister Alejandro Mayorkas said, quoted in the note, that this increase demonstrates DHS’s commitment to “ expand legal channels ” to allow people from the Northern Triangle, a region that makes up most of the migrants who to the US on an irregular basis to have a chance in this country.
Mayorkas recalled that this H-2B visa program “is designed to help employers fill temporary jobs.”
The visas will be “available in the coming months” through a line to be published in the Federal Register, as the official magazine of the federal government in the country is called, the information said.
Under the amended version of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the United States Congress set a limit of 66,000 visas per fiscal year, with a quota of 33,000 for employees hired in the first half of the year (October 1 through October 31) . remaining 33,000 plus those not used in the first installment of the year available for the second half (April 1 to September 30).
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DHS indicated that it was announced on February 12 that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had received enough petitions to comply with the H-2B limit set for the second half of the fiscal year.
The H-2B program “allows US employers or job brokers who meet certain specific legal requirements to bring foreigners to the United States to fill temporary non-farm jobs,” the USCIS explained on its website.
According to the NGO Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Mexican workers make up the majority of the participants in the H-2B program, with about 74% of the workforce hired with these visas in 2019.
That same year, 90% of the workers were male and only 10% female.