5. Department of Homeland Security · Notable
Issue no regulations supporting the 'H-2 eligible' country list
Printed page 138 5. Department of Homeland Security
“The Secretary should not issue any regulations in support of the "H-2 eligible" country list, the effect of which would prevent favoring certain foreign nationals seeking an H-2 guest worker visa based simply on their nationality.”
What has happened
- Done
A refrain-from ask, sorted and leveled under playbook 3b: the Secretary is the actor and the Secretary's own inaction is the compliance, so the ask is `done` while no regulation supporting the list issues and would become `reversed` the day one does. It is not `not-started`: that stamp would say nobody had looked. **The negative, and how far it reaches.** No rulemaking, notice or other Federal Register document in support of the "H-2 eligible" country list has issued since 2025-01-20. Federal Register full text returns zero documents across the window for "Whose Nationals Are Eligible To Participate", "H-2 eligible", "eligible country list", "eligible countries" with H-2B, "designated countries" with H-2A and the regulatory citation 214.2(h)(5)(i)(F); the same phrase search over the two preceding years returns the annual designation notices of 2023-11-09 and 2024-11-08, so the search finds the instrument when it exists. The 2024 designation ran one year from publication and was not renewed. That is a negative about rulemaking and about published notices, which is the whole of what this ask asks the Secretary not to do. **The in-window action closest to the object runs the same way.** DHS's only H-2 numerical action of the window, the FY 2026 supplemental H-2B rule of 2026-02-03, distributes all 64,716 additional visas in three allocations by the petitioner's start date of need and names no country anywhere in its text; the equivalent FY 2025 rule of 2024-12-02 had reserved 20,000 of the same 64,716 visas for nationals of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, Ecuador and Costa Rica. That is precisely the effect the Quote says withholding the regulations would have — no favoring of foreign nationals "based simply on their nationality".
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
The “H-2 eligible” country list is published as an annual DHS/State notice identifying the countries whose nationals may participate in the H-2A and H-2B programs.
Negative search. Federal Register full-text search over the window for “eligible to participate in the H-2A”, “H-2A and H-2B Nonimmigrant Worker Programs”, “Identification of Foreign Countries Whose Nationals Are Eligible”, “H-2 eligible”, “eligible country list” and “214.2(h)(5)(i)(F)” returns zero documents, and no such notice appears in the federal records we keep and search. The same searches run back to 2023 return the annual designation notices of 2023-11-09 (FR 2023-24210) and 2024-11-08 (FR 2024-25790), which is the control that shows the query finds the instrument when it exists.
- Reviewed 2026-09-01: read as a refrain-from ask — one where the administration’s own inaction is the compliance — and moved from not started to done. An earlier reading held it at not started on the ground that an absence of action is “not the affirmative repudiation the Quote is reaching for”. For a refrain-from ask that is the wrong test: the Secretary’s inaction is the compliance, and no repudiation is required. The earlier cross-reference to #291 (DHS using its H-2B discretion expansively) is about a different ask; on this ask the same H-2B rule runs the Quote’s way, because it allocates no visas by nationality.
- Not flagged Already true: refrain-from asks never carry that flag, and in any event the pre-window designation notice of 2024-11-08 was in force on 2025-01-20.
- Action
- eliminate
- Object
- "H-2 eligible" country list regulations
- ID
- 292