H-2B Compliance Audits & Program Management
An H-2B compliance audit finds the problems that matter before an investigator does. For most employers, the H-2B risk is not the filing. It is what happens after certification. Workers get placed at a sister property or with an affiliate that never petitioned. Payroll runs through a different company. A role drifts from the job that was certified. A worker leaves mid-season and no one sends the separation notice. Records leave with the last HR manager. None of this feels like a violation in the moment. To the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) and to USCIS, each one can be. Frontera Labor’s attorney-led audits find these problems first, fix what can be fixed, and build a system so they don’t come back.Who This Is For
- Multi-property and multi-entity employers in hospitality, food service, landscaping, construction and seasonal tourism, where staff move between locations and payroll is centralized.
- Programs that have changed hands, where the person who ran H-2B has left and the records are incomplete.
- Employers facing a WHD investigation or an appointment letter asking for payroll, recruitment and reimbursement records.
- Employers planning a larger season who want the program on firm ground before filing more applications.
Our Audit & Compliance Services
1. H-2B Program Audit
- Worker-by-worker reconciliation: every H-2B worker matched against the certification and petition: employer entity, worksite and area of intended employment, occupation, wage, dates and status.
- Payroll and wage review: actual pay against the prevailing wage and offered wage, overtime, deductions, and pay for U.S. workers in comparable positions.
- Reimbursements: inbound travel, visa costs and daily subsistence, paid on time and at current rates.
- Recruitment and records: job orders, recruitment reports, separation notices and record retention for the required three years.
- Lookback: typically the past three seasons, matching DOL’s retention period.
2. Workforce Immigration Compliance Review
- Review of Form I-9 practices and work-authorization tracking across the workforce, including non-H-2B seasonal staff such as J-1 and TN workers.
3. Exposure Assessment
- A privileged written assessment of what we found, how DOL and USCIS would likely view it, and the potential exposure: back wages, civil money penalties, debarment and petition revocation.
4. Corrective Action
- Worker transfer plans, new certifications and petitions for the correct employer, cap-exempt changes of employer, amended petitions, overdue separation notices and pay corrections.
5. Investigation Response
- Responses to WHD appointment letters and document requests, and representation through the investigation.
6. Ongoing Program Management
- A go-forward compliance system: season calendar from filing through arrival and departure, a single record for every worker, entity firewalls, named internal owners, and training for the people who run the program.
- Optional ongoing management of the H-2B program by our team, season after season.
7. Pre-Filing Reviews
- Before you file, a review of your payroll, worker counts and statement of temporary need, so the numbers DOL reads support the number of workers you request.
Why It Matters
H-2B enforcement runs on two tracks. The Wage and Hour Division can assess back wages and civil money penalties, currently up to $15,846 per violation and counted per worker, and can debar an employer from DOL foreign-labor programs for one to five years. USCIS can revoke approved petitions and deny future ones. For a seasonal business, losing the program for even one season can be existential. The most important variable is timing. A problem the employer finds and corrects on its own looks very different from the same facts discovered by an investigator.How an Engagement Works
- Consultation and scoping: we learn how your program is structured and agree on what the audit will cover.
- Document collection: we work from your filings, payroll and HR records. If we prepared your filings, much of this is already in hand.
- Review, on-site where useful: including interviews with the people who run the program day to day.
- Findings and corrections: a privileged report, then the corrective filings and fixes.
- System and handoff: a compliance system your team can run, or that we run with you.
Pricing
Pricing for audit and compliance work is individually tailored to each employer. It depends on the number of entities, worksites, certifications and workers involved, the seasons reviewed, whether on-site work is needed, and whether you want ongoing program management afterward. We scope every engagement after an initial consultation and confirm the price in writing before any work begins.See What an Audit Finds
Read our case study, What an H-2B Compliance Audit Actually Finds, from an engagement with a multi-property hospitality group, and our seasonal restaurant case study on why worker counts must match payroll. More are in our H-2B case studies.Official sources: the Wage and Hour Division’s H-2B enforcement page, the enforcement rules at 29 CFR Part 503, and employer obligations at 20 CFR Part 655, Subpart A.
