H-2B Temporary Guest Worker Program

NAHB encourages the expansion of guest worker programs that complement ongoing domestic recruitment and training efforts to ensure a workforce that can meet the nation’s housing construction needs.

Some in the building industry have turned to temporary guest worker programs after exhausting their options to obtain local, domestic labor for work in trades such as roofing, carpentry, drywall installation and landscaping.

The H-2B temporary non-agricultural worker program, while costly and bureaucratically challenging, has allowed some employers with peak, seasonal labor needs to secure additional workers to supplement their regular employees. These visas are available to a broad swath of seasonal industries for which temporary labor demand is high.

Given the chronic labor shortages facing the home building industry, NAHB has been urging both Congress and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to expand the number of H-2B visas available each year, including restoring an exemption for returning H-2B workers from counting toward the program’s annual statutory cap.

Current Status of the Program

The H-2B program has an annual cap of 66,000 visas that can be issued nationwide each year (33,000 for each half). Workers who came into the United States on an H-2B visa in any of three prior years were previously exempted from being counted towards that total, but Congress allowed this exemption to expire in September 2016. As a result, the pool of available visas has been exhausted prematurely every year since, shutting out many companies who have used H-2B labor in the past.

For more information about the overall program, visit the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services web site.