Pabian Law clients,
Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. Department of Labor released lottery assignments for H-2B visa petitions with April 1, 2026 start dates. As a reminder, only April 1st start date petitions go through the random lottery. You should have received emails from the U.S. Department of Labor with lottery assignments (both you and us are included on the government emails).
Based on our initial review, this year the lottery results went all the way to Group H. This is the first time that Group H has been reached, meaning that this year again marks the most H-2B visa petitions ever received for April 1st start dates.
We will be emailing you each directly tomorrow (on Monday) with your lottery assignments by position. One of the difficulties of the lottery assignments is that the positions are not listed on the government emails. In our mission to only send complete and accurate information, we kindly ask that you give us some time today and on Monday morning to review the lottery positions and send you correct information about your petitions.
Finally, for those that are seeing lottery results that are not what you were hoping for, please remember that there are paths forward and solutions to successfully file your H-2B visa petitions and staff H-2B visa workers for the coming season. To that end, we and our sister company, Seasonal Connect, are hosting two webinars next week. Details are below:
- Saving your Summer Season: H-2B Lottery Results, Cap Relief, & Staffing Strategies for Success (Seasonal Connect complimentary webinar)
- Tuesday, January 13th at 2pm EST
- Register online at bit.ly/44Ao4kd
- Making Sense of the H-2B Visa Lottery and Demand (Town Hall webinar)
- Thursday, January 15th at 2pm EST
- Register online at https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/q4o4YD3uToOr9sO-dgbxKQ
During the January 15th webinar, I will also discuss yesterday’s cap relief announcement and its implications. I highly encourage everyone to attend both webinars.
Thank you,
Keith