“Can I bring in seasonal workers on H-2B?” Possibly, if your need for the extra hands is truly temporary and you start early enough. H-2B is the federal program that lets a US employer hire foreign workers for temporary non-farm jobs. It is not quick and it is not cheap, and lately far more jobs have been requested than there are visas. This article lays out who uses it, the steps in order, the cap and how the first-day filing is randomized, what you must pay, and the date to start if you want crews on April 1.
Who uses it
Landscaping is the program’s biggest user by far. The Department of Labor’s statistics for the first half of fiscal year 2026 (data as of March 31, 2026) show 137,838 H-2B positions certified, and 70,287 of them, 51.0%, were for landscaping and groundskeeping workers. Forest and conservation workers and construction laborers are also on that top-ten list. If you run a landscaping business with a crew that grows from spring to fall, your occupation is the one that uses this program most, and a tree service company is among the ten employers on the same report with the most positions certified.
The test is the need, not the job. Under 20 CFR §655.6, the employer must show that its need for the work is temporary, “regardless of whether the underlying job is permanent or temporary,” and the need must be one of four kinds: a one-time occurrence, a seasonal need, a peakload need or an intermittent need. Say a landscaper’s crew grows every April and shrinks every November: that pattern is what the application would document as a seasonal need. A crew you need all year round does not fit any of the four.
The steps, in order
- Prevailing wage determination. The Labor Department’s National Prevailing Wage Center sets the minimum wage you must offer for the job in your area. Its H-2B page says to request it at least 60 calendar days before you need it. You must have it before you file the job order (§655.10(c)).
- The application and the job order. You file Form ETA-9142B with the National Processing Center and the same job order with your State Workforce Agency. Under §655.15(b), the application must be filed no more than 90 and no less than 75 calendar days before your date of need.
- Acceptance. If the application is complete, the certifying officer sends a Notice of Acceptance within 7 business days of receiving it; if not, a Notice of Deficiency, and you get 10 business days to fix it.
- Recruiting US workers. Within 14 calendar days of the Notice of Acceptance, you recruit. You must contact your former US workers in that job from the previous year (except those dismissed for cause or who walked off) and invite them back (§655.43), post the job where your employees will see it for 15 consecutive business days (or notify their union, if they have one), and keep taking US applicants until 21 days before the date of need. Any US applicant who is qualified and available must be hired (§655.40(e)).
- Certification, then USCIS. With the certification in hand, you file Form I-129 with US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which counts petitions against the cap.
- Visas and travel. The workers then apply for visas abroad and travel to you.
The cap, and why the first three days matter
Congress caps H-2B at 66,000 a fiscal year, according to USCIS: 33,000 for workers who start between October 1 and March 31, and 33,000 for those who start between April 1 and September 30. Numbers left over from the first half can be used in the second; nothing carries into the next year. Generally, a worker already in the US in H-2B status who extends a stay or changes employers is not subject to the cap, nor is one already counted against it in the same fiscal year whom the employer names on the petition.
Because the filing window opens 90 days before the date of need, employers who want workers on April 1 file as close to January 1 as they can. The Labor Department processes the applications filed in the first three calendar days in a random order, sorting them into assignment groups. Its announcements give the scale. For an April 1, 2026 start, 10,062 applications for 162,603 worker positions were filed from January 1 to 3, 2026, and Assignment Group A alone held enough positions to reach the 33,000 half-year allotment. For an October 1, 2026 start, filed July 3 to 5, 2026, there were 2,625 applications for 51,158 positions, split into Group A (1,881 cases) and Group B (744 cases), with Group A again enough to reach 33,000.
The USCIS side moves just as fast. On September 11, 2026, USCIS announced it had received enough petitions to reach the cap for the first half of fiscal year 2027: September 4, 2026 was the final receipt date for cap-subject petitions asking for a start date before April 1, 2027. The second half’s 33,000, for workers starting April 1, 2027 or later, is a separate count.
Sometimes there are extra visas. For fiscal year 2026, a temporary rule added 64,716, of which 46,226 were limited to returning workers who held H-2B status in one of the three prior fiscal years, and every employer using them had to attest that it is suffering, or will suffer, irreparable harm without the workers. USCIS set September 15, 2026 as the last day it would accept petitions under that rule, or sooner if an allocation’s final filing date passed or its numbers ran out. Extra visas are set year by year, if at all, so do not plan a season around them.
The wage and the other promises
Signing the application commits you to the obligations in §655.20. The ones that cost money:
The filing fees
USCIS fees on Form G-1055 (edition 10/16/26) for an H-2B Form I-129 filed on paper:
| Fee | Regular employer | Small employer |
|---|---|---|
| I-129, named workers (up to 25 per petition) | $1,080 | $540 |
| I-129, unnamed workers (no limit per petition) | $580 | $460 |
| Fraud Prevention and Detection fee (H-2B) | $150 | $150 |
| Asylum Program Fee | $600 | $300 |
The I-129 instructions define a small employer as one with 25 or fewer full-time equivalent employees in the US, counting affiliates and subsidiaries. Online filing, $50 cheaper for a regular employer and the same price for a small one, is available only for cap-exempt H-2B petitions. So, as an example, a landscaper with 12 full-time employees filing one petition for unnamed workers would pay $460, $150 and $300: $910 in USCIS fees before any travel, visa or wage cost, and before an attorney or agent if one is used.
When to start
Work backward from the first day you need the crew. For April 1, 2027:
Keep recruiting at home the whole time. The same steps that test the US labor market are a decent hiring push on their own, and where to find tradespeople lists the free channels worth working while the paperwork moves. If your application lands outside the group that fills the cap, those are the hires that run your season.
General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and vary by state; check with the agency named above or a professional for your situation.