🚨 Washington Just Cut Microsoft, Adobe and 6 IT Giants Off From the Green-Card Pipeline
The US Labor Department suspended Microsoft, Adobe and six IT outsourcers from PERM, the green-card sponsorship programme, on October 8.
The US Labor Department has suspended eight companies, including Microsoft and Adobe, from the programme employers use to sponsor foreign workers for green cards. Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced it at a news conference on Thursday morning, October 8 (Fox Business).
The other six are the outsourcing heavyweights: Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini (Investing.com).
How long the suspension lasts has not been stated, and neither has the specific legal authority behind it. Details are still emerging.
⚡ What Happened
The programme is called PERM, short for Permanent Labor Certification. It is the Labor Department step an employer must clear before sponsoring a worker for permanent residency. Sonderling said the department will take no new PERM applications from the eight companies and will stop processing their pending ones (Fox Business).
The stated grounds differ by company. The six outsourcers were suspended over alleged fraud. Microsoft and Adobe were suspended because of what Sonderling called multiple active federal investigations (Investing.com).
Vance aimed most of his remarks at Microsoft. He said the company laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. Those are the administration’s figures, and Microsoft has not yet answered them.
“Our message to Microsoft is, you’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers.” — Vice President JD Vance, via Fox Business
Microsoft did not immediately respond to the Associated Press’s request for comment (Yahoo Finance).
🧠 Why It Matters
If you work at one of these eight companies on an H-1B and your green-card paperwork is sitting in the PERM queue, it just stopped moving.
The action does not cancel H-1B visas, and it does not stop Microsoft employing H-1B workers generally (Yahoo Finance). But the green card is the reason many engineers take those jobs in the first place. Freeze that path and a US offer from these firms gets a lot less attractive.
The scale is large. Sonderling said the suspended companies have requested almost 3 million foreign workers since 2009, winning more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and more than 100,000 PERM certifications.
Wall Street barely moved. Microsoft was up about 0.2% and Adobe 0.4%, while Infosys fell 2.2% (Investing.com).
🔜 What To Watch
- Duration. In May the department suspended Cloudera’s PERM processing for 180 days. No timeline has been given for these eight.
- Company responses, and lawsuits. No company statement had been reported at the time of writing.
- Criminal exposure. Attorney General Todd Blanche warned that cases could be brought against companies or individuals found to have broken the law.
- Universities. Nine schools, including Harvard, Stanford and MIT, face a separate Labor Department investigation over J-1 visas.
- Congress. Vance urged lawmakers from both parties to rewrite the programme.
Sources
- Fox Business: Vance suspends Microsoft, others from green-card applications
- Investing.com: US suspends Microsoft, Adobe, others from green card program
- Yahoo Finance: Microsoft is suspended from green card program
- CNBC: U.S. suspends Microsoft, Adobe from green-card labor program
❓ Quick answers
Which companies were suspended from the green-card PERM programme?
Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini, as announced by Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling on October 8, 2026, according to Fox Business and Investing.com.
Does the PERM suspension cancel H-1B visas at Microsoft?
No. The action covers permanent labor certification for green cards; Yahoo Finance reports it does not affect Microsoft's ability to employ H-1B workers generally.
How long will Microsoft and Adobe be suspended from PERM?
No duration was stated at the October 8, 2026 announcement. In a separate case in May, the Labor Department suspended Cloudera's PERM processing for 180 days.
