The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Labor, is exercising time-limited Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 authority to issue up to, but not more than, an additional 64,716 visas for the fiscal year. All of these supplemental visas will be available only to those American businesses that are suffering or will suffer impending irreparable harm, i.e., those facing permanent and severe financial loss, as attested by the employer. These supplemental visas will be distributed in three allocations based on the petitioner’s start date of need through the end of the fiscal year.

A basic understanding of economics shows the massive problem with Letlow’s support for flooding Louisiana with H-2B visa workers from foreign countries. Any credible economist (e.g., George Borjas of Harvard) can explain that increasing the labor supply in a given geographic area will consequently lead to lower wages for local workers. An abundance of workers in a small area gives businesses the ability to pay lower wages because the supply of workers outweighs the demand for them.

Previous research from the Center of Immigration Studies (CIS) and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has shown that the H-2B visa program is essentially a massive handout to massive corporations. This visa program allows businesses to avoid paying living wages to American citizens by importing tens of thousands of “temporary” foreign workers for seasonal jobs. In fact, an EPI report from last year found that wages for H-2B visa holders are substantially lower than those of American citizens in the same industry—demonstrating how foreign workers can be used to undercut domestic wages.