The United States government has nearly double the number of visas that allow certain trucking companies to hire foreign truck drivers.
The Department of Homeland Security has opened up 64,716 H-2B visas for the fiscal year 2025 – from October 1st, 2024 through September 30th, 2025. These newly released H-2B visas are in addition to the preexisting 66,000 temporary nonagricultural worker visas mandated by Congress yearly.
45,000 of the new visas will be offered first to returning foreign workers from the last three years, while the remaining visas will be granted to workers from Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras.
The H-2B program allows employers to hire foreign workers for temporary, nonagricultural work on a one-time occurrence, seasonal, peak load or intermittent basis. Trucking is one of several industries that takes advantage of the program. Last year, trucking companies that hired the most workers through the program were in Montana, Florida, and Massachusetts.
“There are employers across the country that would suffer greatly without H-2B workers. Authorizing these supplemental visas helps U.S. employers fill those positions,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “It helps fuel our economy and reduce irregular migration while also providing a safe and lawful pathway to the United States for noncitizens who are prepared to work.”