The Trump administration has suspended Microsoft, Adobe and six major Indian IT outsourcing firms from a key federal green-card program, a move that has thrown the permanent-residency plans of thousands of skilled tech workers into uncertainty and reignited a long-running fight over the use of foreign labor in the U.S. technology industry.
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the Department of Labor was suspending the eight companies — Microsoft, Adobe, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Cognizant and Capgemini — from the Permanent Labor Certification, or PERM, program over alleged misuse of the system, which employers use to sponsor foreign workers for employment-based green cards. The administration is separately opening probes into nine major universities over their handling of international student and research visas.
A Pathway, Not a Deportation Order
Immigration attorneys note that the PERM suspension does not itself require affected employees to leave the country or automatically invalidate their existing work authorization — its effect falls on the permanent-residency step, a critical later stage of the employment-based green-card process that can otherwise take many years to complete for applicants from India, where backlogs are especially severe. For workers already deep into that yearslong wait, however, even a temporary freeze can mean starting the clock over or facing new uncertainty about their long-term status in the country.
Microsoft has pushed back on the administration's characterization of its hiring practices, while Vice President JD Vance singled out the company, saying there is no company in the United States that has "abused the system more than Microsoft." Industry group Nasscom, which represents Indian technology firms, argues the action affects a specific and narrow immigration pathway and notes that major Indian IT companies have already reduced their reliance on H-1B visas in recent years in response to earlier rounds of U.S. restrictions.
A Broader Immigration Squeeze
The PERM suspension is the latest in a string of administration actions tightening legal immigration pathways for skilled foreign workers, alongside a separate newsroom's tally of how many visas the State Department has revoked under the broader crackdown, a tool used far more aggressively against a range of visa categories since the start of the administration. For many Indian software engineers and researchers who have built careers and families in the United States while waiting out the green-card backlog, the cumulative effect of these measures has been a growing sense that the American dream they signed up for now comes with far less certainty attached.
Neither the Labor Department nor the named companies have indicated how long the PERM suspension will remain in effect, and immigration lawyers said they expect legal challenges from at least some of the affected firms in the coming weeks.