Sponsors (12)
Official title: To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide for an H-2C nonimmigrant classification, and for other purposes.
Introduced September 18, 2025 by Lloyd K. Smucker · Last progress September 18, 2025
The bill creates a formal H‑2C temporary worker program that increases employer access to predictable foreign labor and adds worker protections and program oversight, but it couples strict mobility rules, surveillance, ineligibility for major tax/subsidy benefits, new fees, and administrative complexity that reduce workers' net compensation and create uncertainty and costs for employers and government.
Employers (especially small businesses in low sales‑per‑employee industries) gain expanded access to temporary H‑2C workers through reserved slots, small‑business priority, and phased numerical caps that provide predictable program size.
H‑2C applicants, employers, and state workforce agencies gain a centralized registry and formal position registration that increases transparency of open jobs and can improve job matching.
H‑2C workers receive stronger legal protections and remedies (anti‑retaliation, complaint process, back wages) and some mobility rights (ability to terminate at will and to change registered employers after one year), improving worker safety and autonomy.
H‑2C workers face strict employment and mobility constraints (14‑day reporting, a 45‑day unemployment limit, mandatory departure), increasing the risk and precarity for immigrant workers when jobs end or fail to materialize.
H‑2C workers are barred from major tax and premium subsidy benefits (premium tax credits, Child Tax Credit, EITC), reducing their take‑home pay and access to affordable health coverage and increasing pressure on local health and social services.
The bill imposes new fees (registration, scarcity recruitment, per‑application, possible premium fees) that raise employer hiring costs and may be passed to consumers or reduce hiring margins for small businesses.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Creates a new H‑2C temporary worker program with allocation rules and small‑business priorities, and bars H‑2C workers from several federal tax credits.
Creates a new H‑2C nonimmigrant worker classification and an administrative framework for admitting and allocating those temporary workers, with definitions, employer registration rules, allocation timing, and priority rules for small businesses and certain industries. It also makes H‑2C workers ineligible for several federal tax‑based benefits (including the premium tax credit, child tax credit, and EITC) and prescribes how unfilled registered positions are reallocated. Many operative details are missing in the provided text: one amendment inserts language into the H‑2 statutory definition but the inserted text isn’t shown, and a newly added statutory slot for H‑2C admissions is created with headings and definitions but with only partial substantive provisions available in the excerpt. The bill therefore establishes a new temporary worker program structure, allocates positions by two six‑month periods with small‑business reservations, sets employer priorities and fees, and removes key tax benefits from admitted H‑2C workers.