H.R. 7682: Closing the Workforce Gap Act of 2026

Closing the Workforce Gap Act of 2026

This bill is designed to massively increase yearly guestworker entries under the H-2B visa program. While the bill includes modest reforms to the H-2B visa program, which has faced decades of fraud and abuse, the enormous increase in the program more than overshadows them.

The current cap on the H-2B visa program is 66,000, but this bill establishes a new floor that equals the number of Department of Labor certified positions for the previous fiscal year. In FY2025, that number was over 230,000. In addition to immediately increasing the yearly cap by nearly 250%, the bill also exempts workers from rural and seasonal jobs from the newly expanded cap. Since a significant number of H-2Bs work in both seasonal and rural jobs, the cap would easily surpass 300,000. With no statutory limit on this expansion, the cheap-labor program would undoubtedly grow exponentially year over year.