Headlines:
FY 2027 H-1B Cap Preliminary Registration Interval Opens March 4 – The preliminary registration interval for the Fiscal 12 months 2027 H-1B cap will open at midday ET on March 4 and run by midday ET on March 19, 2026.
DOL-DHS Non permanent Rule Will Enhance H-2B Visa Restrict in FY 2026 – The Departments of Labor and Homeland Safety plan to concern as much as a further 64,716 H-2B visas for this fiscal 12 months.
Ninth Circuit Guidelines That Secretary Noem Exceeded Her Authority With Respect to Venezuelan and Haitian TPS – The U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit dominated that Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem exceeded her statutory authority in her vacatur and termination of Venezuela’s Non permanent Protected Standing (TPS) designation and her partial vacatur of Haiti’s TPS designation. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court docket’s setting apart of the Venezuelan vacatur and termination, and the Haitian partial vacatur.
Trump Administration Launches ‘Gold Card’ Website – The positioning contains utility info and questions and solutions in regards to the Trump Gold Card.
Particulars:
FY 2027 H-1B Cap Preliminary Registration Interval Opens March 4
On January 30, 2026, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Companies (USCIS) introduced that the preliminary registration interval for the Fiscal 12 months (FY) 2027 H-1B cap will open at midday ET on March 4 and run by midday ET on March 19, 2026.
Throughout that interval, potential H-1B cap-subject petitioners and representatives should use a USCIS on-line account to register every beneficiary for the choice course of and pay the related $215 H-1B registration charge. H-1B petitioning employers who shouldn’t have a USCIS on-line account should create an organizational account. Representatives could add firm shoppers to their accounts at any time, however each representatives and employers should wait till March 4 to enter beneficiary info and submit registrations and the $215 charge.
Picks will happen after the preliminary registration interval closes. USCIS stated it would ship choice notifications by March 31, 2026, by way of customers’ USCIS on-line accounts, to potential petitioners and representatives who’ve at the least one registration chosen.
New for the FY 2027 Cap Season
The brand new H-1B choice course of prioritizes allocating visas to higher-skilled and higher-paid employees. For the FY 2027 H-1B cap season, USCIS will conduct a weighted choice if it receives registrations for distinctive beneficiaries throughout the preliminary registration interval that exceed the cap. If USCIS doesn’t obtain registrations for sufficient distinctive beneficiaries, it would choose all registrations for distinctive beneficiaries that had been correctly submitted within the preliminary registration interval.
Pursuant to the Presidential Proclamation, Restriction on Entry of Sure Nonimmigrant Staff, a petitioner whose registration is chosen and who’s in any other case eligible to file an H-1B cap-subject petition “could must pay a further $100,000 charge earlier than submitting the H-1B petition as a situation of eligibility,” USCIS famous.
Further info on the digital registration course of is on the market on the H-1B Digital Registration Course of web page. USCIS stated it would replace the web page earlier than the preliminary registration interval.
DOL-DHS Non permanent Rule Will Enhance H-2B Visa Restrict in FY 2026
The Departments of Labor (DOL) and Homeland Safety (DHS) plan to publish a brief rule on February 3, 2026, to train their time-limited Fiscal 12 months (FY) 2026 authority to concern as much as a further 64,716 H-2B visas for this fiscal 12 months. The supplemental visas will probably be obtainable solely to U.S. companies “which might be struggling or will undergo impending irreparable hurt, i.e., these going through everlasting and extreme monetary loss, as attested by the employer,” an advance copy of the rule states. The supplemental visas “will probably be distributed in three allocations based mostly on the petitioner’s begin date of want by the top of the fiscal 12 months”:
- 18,490 instantly obtainable visas restricted to returning employees, that’s, those that had been issued an H-2B visa or in any other case granted H-2B standing in FYs 2023, 2024, or 2025, and who will probably be obtainable for eligible employers with a necessity for employees to start work between January 1, 2026, by March 31, 2026. Employers should file these petitions no later than 14 days after the second half of the statutory cap is reached;
- 27,736 visas, plus any unused visas from the primary allocation, restricted to returning employees, that’s, those that had been issued an H-2B visa or in any other case granted H-2B standing in FYs 2023, 2024, or 2025, and who will probably be obtainable for eligible employers with a necessity for employees to start work between April 1, 2026, and April 30, 2026. Employers should file these petitions no sooner than 15 days after the second half of the statutory cap is reached; and
- 18,490 visas, plus any unused visas from the primary or second allocations, for many who will probably be obtainable for eligible employers with a necessity for employees to start work between Might 1, 2026, and September 30, 2026. These petitions are exempt from the returning employee requirement. Employers should file these petitions no sooner than 45 days after the second half of the statutory cap is reached.
DHS stated that it’s going to not settle for any H-2B petitions beneath provisions associated to the FY 2026 supplemental numerical allocations after September 15, 2026, and won’t approve any such H 2B petitions after September 30, 2026. The rule is efficient from January 30, 2026, by September 30, 2026, apart from the necessities at 20 CFR 655.69, that are efficient from January 30, 2026, by September 30, 2029. Below the doc retention necessities at 20 CFR 655.69, petitioners should retain paperwork and information demonstrating compliance with this rule for 3 years from the date of the attestation, and should present the paperwork and information on the request of DHS or DOL.
Feedback on the non permanent rule will probably be accepted for 60 days from publication and may be submitted by way of the strategy famous within the rule.
Ninth Circuit Guidelines That Secretary Noem Exceeded Her Authority With Respect to Venezuelan and Haitian TPS
On January 28, 2026, the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit dominated that Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem exceeded her statutory authority in her vacatur and termination of Venezuela’s Non permanent Protected Standing (TPS) designation and her partial vacatur of Haiti’s TPS designation. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court docket’s setting apart of the Venezuelan vacatur and termination, and the Haitian partial vacatur.
The Ninth Circuit famous that Secretary Noem vacated the prior administration’s extension of TPS for Venezuela by October 2, 2026, and terminated Venezuela’s TPS efficient April 3, 2025. Secretary Noem additionally partially vacated the prior administration’s extension of Haiti’s TPS such that the designation would expire in August 2025 as an alternative of February 2026. Amongst different issues, the court docket famous that the plain textual content of the TPS statute gives {that a} TPS termination can’t be efficient sooner than the expiration of the latest earlier extension.
The court docket stated that Secretary Noem’s actions “have left a whole lot of hundreds of individuals in a continuing state of worry that they are going to be deported, detained, separated from their households, and returned to a rustic during which they had been subjected to violence or another variety of harms. The Secretary’s actions essentially contradict Congress’s statutory design, and her assertion of a uncooked, unchecked energy to vacate a rustic’s TPS is irreconcilable with the plain language of the statute.”
In a concurrence, Choose Salvador Mendoza, Jr., remarked on Secretary Noem’s “rushed and irregular course of” in vacating Venezuelan and Haitian TPS, resulting in a “preordained end result,” and underscored “why we should not allow authorities businesses to justify their actions with pretext, particularly when that pretext is cloaking animus on the premise of race or nationwide origin.” He stated that “Secretary Noem’s vacatur actions would fail on the impartial floor that they had been arbitrary and capricious in contravention of the [Administrative Procedure Act], as even a cursory assessment of the report signifies that her selections had been each preordained and rooted in pretext.” Noting that public statements by President Trump and Secretary Noem had been based on “racist stereotyping based mostly on nation of origin,” he stated, “This case presents one of many uncommon conditions the place the robust displaying of dangerous religion wanted to look past the executive report is well met.”
Trump Administration Launches ‘Gold Card’ Website
The Trump administration has launched its “Trump Gold Card” web site. The positioning contains utility info and questions and solutions in regards to the Trump Gold Card. It explains that for a $15,000 “processing charge” and, after background approval, a contribution of $1 million, a person can “obtain U.S. residency in report time.” The positioning contains info for people and companies.
The positioning additionally contains info on the “Trump Platinum Card,” which it says is coming quickly. The positioning says that overseas nationals can join now to safe their locations on the ready checklist. When launched, and upon receipt of a $15,000 “processing charge” and a $5 million contribution, “they are going to have the flexibility to spend as much as 270 days in the US with out being topic to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. earnings.”
