As of the beginning of January, 1,502 H-2B workers are on Guam. More than 1,000 applications for H-2B workers are in the pipeline now, all of them from the Philippines, according to PDN.
The Philippines’ addition to the H-2B eligible list follows passage of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, which also expanded Guam’s ability to seek foreign labor for construction projects outside of military fences. “So now they would say, I need 30 carpenters, and then they don’t have to come up with names until applying for visas,” Massey said. “When the Philippines was off the list, you had to actually come up with the 30 names before you could ever apply with USCIS, and that’s problematic because it’s a long process. So you’d get a list of names, and these workers would start dropping off, and you’d have to almost start over. It slowed down the process quite a bit.
Source: News Formal (newsformal.com)