Labor Department Suspends 8 Tech Firms From PERM Green Card Program

Eight firms cut off from green card sponsorship

The Labor Department has suspended eight major tech and outsourcing firms from the PERM program, the first step companies use to sponsor foreign workers for green cards.

Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the move on October 8 alongside Vice President JD Vance. The government will no longer accept new applications or process pending PERM applications from Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe.

PERM, or permanent labor certification, requires employers to show that no qualified American workers are available for a role before a foreign worker can get an employment-based green card. The suspension freezes that pathway for the affected companies.

Why these companies were targeted

Sonderling said the eight firms were suspended over alleged abuse of foreign-worker programs, with Microsoft and Adobe suspended specifically over what he called multiple active federal investigations.

"Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost three million foreign workers," Sonderling said. "They've received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications."

Vance singled out Microsoft, saying the company laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. He said there has been no company in the United States that has abused the system more than Microsoft.

Microsoft pushes back

Microsoft said 80% of the roughly 6,000 H-1B applications it filed last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of people already working at the company. The rest were for new hires already living in the United States legally, a group equal to about 1% of its U.S. workforce.

The company said it pays H-1B employees the same as any other employees doing comparable work and that the vast majority of its U.S. employees are Americans. It said it looks forward to providing the administration with additional information.

The announcement landed hours before President Trump awarded Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at a White House ceremony. Nadella himself once held an H-1B visa.

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Options market and stocks to watch

Immigration crackdowns create headline risk for the outsourcing names and for Microsoft itself. MSFT is the largest filer of PERM applications in the country, so any extended suspension hits a key retention tool for its foreign-born engineering workforce. Watch for elevated put flow if the dispute drags on.

ADBE faces the same overhang on a smaller scale. The Indian IT outsourcers trade in the U.S. as ADRs: INFY, WIT and CTSH all rely heavily on moving workers between the U.S. and India, and a frozen green card pipeline raises their cost of doing business.

For the broader market, this is part of a wider skilled-immigration squeeze that also includes a proposed $100,000 H-1B fee and probes into nine universities over student visa programs. More headlines like this one keep volatility bid in tech. Track the action on the Unusual Whales news feed.

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