5 Ways to Verify an H-2B Employer Before You Travel

Most H-2B workers take a job through a recruiter, sight unseen, from another country. A legitimate H-2B job offer comes with documents a real employer can hand over and costs a real employer covers for you.

Start with the four simple checks below to verify your H-2B job offer before you travel or start work.

1. Refuse any recruitment, placement, or attorney fee

A real H-2B employer pays the recruitment, application, petition, and attorney costs. You do not. The only fee that is yours is your passport, and your visa and border-crossing fees have to be reimbursed in your first workweek.

Any placement deposit, "training fee," transportation prepayment, or "processing fee" asked for before you travel is prohibited. If the employer or its recruiter collects a fee they are supposed to cover, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services must deny the petition, with only narrow exceptions (as of July 2026), so charging you also puts the job itself at risk.

2. Ask for the USCIS approval notice (Form I-797B)

When USCIS approves the employer's petition, it issues an approval notice called Form I-797B. It lists the employer, you as the worker, the H-2B classification, and the dates the job is valid. Ask the employer for it before you buy a plane ticket.

Some employers send only the tear-off section meant for the worker, and that is enough. What matters is that a real, approved petition produces this notice.

3. Ask for the employer's Department of Labor case number

Every real H-2B job is filed with the Department of Labor before the employer can hire you. That filing has a case number, and a legitimate employer will give it to you if you ask. The number is your proof that the job was filed and reviewed, not invented for a recruiting pitch.

4. Use your visa interview as a built-in check

Your visa interview is a check the government runs for you. The consular officer compares your application, your passport, and the employer's approval notice, so an offer that does not hold together tends to come apart here. Treat the interview as confirmation, not a formality.

While you are there, ask for the State Department's Rights and Protections for Temporary Workers pamphlet, sometimes called the Wilberforce pamphlet. It lists your wage, fee, and safety rights and the numbers to call if something goes wrong after you arrive.

5. Optional: look up the filing and the recruiter yourself

If you want to go further, or you have a family member helping you, two free government databases confirm the paperwork.

The first is DOL's FLAG case lookup. Enter the case number from check 3 and confirm the filing exists and was certified. You can compare the timeline against DOL's processing benchmark too, since a real application takes about four to six months from filing to approval (as of July 2026). An offer approved far faster than that is a warning sign.

The second is DOL's Foreign Labor Recruiter List, updated every few months. Search it for your recruiter's name and the company they claim to represent. Being on the list is not a guarantee, and the government says so, but a recruiter who claims a specific employer and appears nowhere is worth a second look.

Where to get help

If a recruiter asks for a fee, or you have wage or worker-protection concerns, call the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division at 1-866-4USWAGE. Complaints are confidential, and you do not need a lawyer or a current job to file. Send petition or visa fraud tips to uscis.gov/report-fraud.

For the full program overview, see the Department of Labor's H-2B program page.

Find verified H-2B sponsor jobs

Most workers will not run these lookups, which is exactly why a vetted job board helps. Migrate Mate lists H-2B visa jobs using government disclosure data, so employers appear only if their past petitions were certified, and you get direct contact with the hiring manager. That clears the hardest checks before you ever apply.

Frequently asked questions