U.S. Wins Case Against India’s Ban on U.S. Meat; H-2B Workers Year Cap

The U.S. has won its World Trade Organization case against India regarding India’s eight-year-old ban on U.S. poultry, meat, eggs and live pigs. India claimed it needed to restrict these ag products to prevent avian influenza from entering India. The U.S. Trade Representative says low pathogenic avian influenza doesn’t warrant import prohibitions - and while the U.S. has suffered from outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza recently - those outbreaks still don’t justify a ban on imports from the entire country.

On June 5, 2015, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will reopen the congressionally mandated fiscal year 2015 cap and will accept Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker, requesting new H-2B workers with an employment start date between April 1 and September 30, 2015. USCIS’s role in managing the H-2B cap involves ensuring that enough Form I-129 H-2B petitions with a sufficient number of beneficiaries have been approved to fully subscribe the H-2B cap each year.