Labor Department Suspends Microsoft, Adobe and Six Outsourcing Firms From Green Card Program

The Labor Department suspended Microsoft, Adobe and six global IT outsourcing firms from a federal green-card program on Thursday, the latest and broadest move yet in the Trump administration's year-long effort to restrict employment-based immigration ahead of the November midterms.

Vice President JD Vance announced the action at a White House news conference alongside Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, saying the companies would be barred from filing new applications through the agency's permanent labor certification program, known as PERM, and would have any pending applications frozen. PERM is the step an employer must complete, ahead of a petition to immigration authorities, to sponsor a foreign worker for a green card. It is distinct from, but closely tied to, the H-1B visa category that lets companies hire skilled foreign workers on a temporary basis; many H-1B holders rely on an employer-filed PERM case as their path to permanent residency.

The numbers behind the announcement

Sonderling said the eight companies, since 2009, had collectively requested almost 3 million foreign workers and had received more than 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications. He characterized that volume as representing "hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers," according to accounts of the briefing.

Vance focused his sharpest criticism on Microsoft, citing figures he said the campaign was still verifying: that the company laid off about 6,000 American workers over the past year while obtaining 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards in the same period. "There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused the system more than Microsoft," Vance told reporters at the briefing, adding that the company had replaced each departed American worker with "one and a half foreign indentured servants."

Besides Microsoft and Adobe, the suspension covers six IT outsourcing firms with large U.S. visa footprints:

• Cognizant
• Infosys
• Tata Consultancy Services
• Wipro
• HCL Technologies
• Capgemini

How the administration got here

The move extends an escalating campaign against the H-1B and PERM pipelines that began earlier in Trump's second term with a $100,000 fee imposed on new H-1B petitions, a policy that drew legal challenges and has been narrowed by court order. Vance has led a parallel "anti-fraud" task force that in July announced subpoenas tied to visa misuse, and the Labor Department suspended the software firm Cloudera's PERM filings in May after the Justice Department alleged the company had engineered a non-functional recruitment process to avoid hiring qualified American applicants; a similar suspension hit Cognizant in September.

Thursday's announcement came a day after the Department of Homeland Security proposed, in a rule published this week, new fees of up to $70,000 for colleges that enroll international students in Optional Practical Training work programs after graduation — a separate but related effort the administration has also framed as an anti-fraud measure. Attorney General Todd Blanche said separately that the Justice Department is investigating companies accused of favoring foreign workers over American applicants, and the Labor Department's inspector general announced a review of J-1 visa practices at nine universities, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford and MIT.

The timing drew notice for another reason: Thursday afternoon, hours after Vance's remarks, President Trump presented Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at a separate White House ceremony honoring technology and science leaders. Vance acknowledged the juxtaposition, telling reporters Microsoft remained "a great American company" even as it faced sanction.

Who is affected, and the reaction

The practical effect, according to the Labor Department's description of the action, is that the suspended companies cannot submit new PERM applications and will not have pending ones processed while the suspension is in force; it does not by itself revoke the status of workers already holding H-1B visas or green cards. Companies that rely on the pipeline to convert temporary visa holders into permanent residents, and the foreign workers awaiting those green cards, are the most directly affected.

Microsoft disputed the administration's framing. The company said in a statement that "the vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans," and that roughly 80% of the H-1B petitions it filed in the last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of existing employees rather than to bring in new hires, adding that it looked forward to providing the administration with additional information. Adobe did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and none of the six outsourcing firms had issued public statements as of Friday.

India's government objected most forcefully. In a written statement issued Friday, the Ministry of External Affairs said Vance's description of visa holders was unwarranted and historically loaded.

"Resorting to terminology that carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations is deeply offensive," the ministry said in its statement, adding that Indian professionals in the United States "are highly educated and skilled contributors" to the American economy.

The ministry noted that most of the suspended firms are Indian or have large Indian workforces, and said the PERM freeze was distinct from the H-1B program; existing visa holders' status, it said, is not directly affected. It added that India remained in contact with U.S. authorities about the matter.

What happens next

Vance said the suspensions would "last as long as it needs to," and that the administration has tools to extend them indefinitely absent changes in hiring practices, though he did not describe a formal review timeline or appeals process. Neither Vance nor Sonderling cited the specific statutory or regulatory authority for the suspensions in their public remarks, and it remains unclear whether the affected companies will challenge the action in court, as Cloudera has done in connection with its own PERM suspension.

For now, the companies are left to decide whether to contest the move, comply with requests for additional hiring data, or wait out a suspension with no fixed end date. The broader regulatory changes moving alongside it, including the proposed international-student work-visa fees, face public comment periods that extend into November and December, meaning the administration's immigration enforcement push is likely to remain a live issue through the midterm elections and beyond.