Pabian Law Clients,
U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the Supplemental Cap (cap relief visas) was reached for the winter-season allotment for the current season already underway (the 2025-2026 season). Not only was the Supplemental Cap reached, but a random lottery was conducted due to USCIS receiving more than the 18,490 worker petitions that were made available through cap relief. The lottery was conducted on all petitions received between February 2nd-February 6th.
For our winter-season clients that filed Supplemental Cap visas, we will be in touch as soon as we have news. We are waiting on confirmations on whether your petitions were receipted in or did not fare well in this lottery. You will know as soon as we do.
Please reference our Client Alert that was published a couple of weeks ago, Important Pabian Law Client Alert: Details of FY 2026 H-2B visa cap relief. It provides more information about cap relief and the allocations for different start dates, including the one for winter-season filers.
Some important notes:
- This relates to the Supplemental Cap/cap relief for the 2025-2026 season. This does not impact the winter 2026-2027 season for which we have been holding planning calls with all of our winter-season clients over the past few months.
- This news does not impact summer-season organizations.
- The pace at which the winter-season Supplemental Cap was reached is unprecedented. There has clearly been many summer-season organizations in the country that moved their start dates to winter dates in the hopes of utilizing cap relief to hire workers. The winter-season Supplemental Cap has never been reached on the first day and never have so many petitions been received through cap relief for winter-season properties. In short, we are shocked by the number of filers.
- USCIS was also shocked. We are hearing many stories of how the number of filings took USCIS by surprise. This included many stories nationally of erroneously returned petitions that were not even considered in the lottery.
- This is another important reminder that relying on cap relief and/or changing your filing plans to try to plan around cap relief is so dangerous. There are so often surprises with cap relief and there are going to now be employers that filed for winter dates that are left without H-2B visa workers this year.
- For our summer-season clients, today’s news does not impact our predictions of who can apply for workers under cap relief. Because of the summer-season lottery and the timing of when Supplemental Cap visas are released, we remain confident in our predictions.
As always, please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions.
Thank you,
Keith and the Pabian Law Team