U.S. suspends Microsoft and major IT firms from PERM green-card certifications

Infosys says it expects no material impact and will answer agency questions

Infosys said in an October 10 exchange filing that it does not expect the U.S. government's PERM suspension to have a material effect on the company. It also said it welcomed the opportunity to work with the Labor Department and related agencies to answer questions. Reuters reported the filing but did not publish a company case count or the full underlying government notice. [1]

The statement narrows one corporate-risk question but does not establish how many Infosys workers have pending cases, what individual delays they face or whether the agency will change its decision. A company expectation of no material financial effect is not the same as no effect on employees whose permanent-residence sponsorship depends on a pending certification. [1][5][3]

TCS says the suspension will not materially change its workforce strategy

Tata Consultancy Services said on October 9 that it does not expect the PERM suspension to materially affect its workforce strategy or client engagements. The company told Reuters that it had filed only single-digit PERM applications in each of the previous two years and plans to hire 15,000 people in the United States over five years while emphasizing local and campus recruitment. [2]

Those figures are TCS's response, not an agency finding, and they do not reveal how many pending workers at TCS or the other seven named companies are affected. The response does narrow one uncertainty: TCS says it will not change its announced U.S. hiring strategy because of the action. It does not resolve the Labor Department's legal authority, evidence or appeal process. [2][5][3]

Microsoft disputes the replacement premise

Microsoft responded after the initial announcement that about 80 percent of its roughly 6,000 H-1B filings in the previous fiscal year extended or changed the status of existing employees. It said the remaining filings for new employees involved people already lawfully in the United States and represented about 1 percent of its U.S. workforce. The company said it files only for people who meet the visa requirements and offered to provide the administration more information. [4]

That response challenges the suggestion that the filing total can be directly equated with the company’s layoffs, but it does not by itself resolve whether any PERM application contained an inaccurate labor-market representation. H-1B filings and PERM certifications serve different legal functions, and the public record reviewed for this update still did not include a company-specific order, evidentiary finding or appeal procedure. [4][5][6]

Eight companies were named, and pending cases are included

Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced on October 8 that the department was suspending Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini from the Permanent Labor Certification program, commonly called PERM. Reuters reported his statement that the department would neither accept new applications nor process pending permanent labor-certification applications involving the companies. [3][4]

The announcement can interrupt an employer-sponsored path to permanent residence for workers whose cases require PERM, including workers at large India-based outsourcing companies. It does not itself revoke a worker’s H-1B visa, cancel permanent residence already granted or prohibit all employment of foreign workers. India Today and Jagran both made that distinction while describing the exposure of Indian professionals and employers. [7][8][5]

PERM is a labor-market certification, not a visa

The Department of Labor’s official PERM guidance says an employer generally must obtain labor certification before filing an employment-based immigrant petition with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The department must certify that there are not enough able, willing, qualified and available U.S. workers for the job and that employing the foreign worker will not harm similarly employed U.S. workers’ wages or working conditions. [5]

Because PERM is one step in a longer process, the immediate effect described by officials is a processing block at the Labor Department. Business Insider reported that the duration and the consequences for individual workers with cases already in progress were not yet clear. Workers may also have cases that do not use PERM, so the announcement should not be read as one uniform result for every employee of the named companies. [9][5][3]

Fraud is alleged, not adjudicated in the reviewed record

Vice President JD Vance accused Microsoft and other employers of using foreign-worker programs to replace or underpay U.S. workers. AP reported his figures for Microsoft layoffs, H-1B approvals and green cards, but those numbers were assertions at the White House news conference and do not by themselves show that the same jobs or people were involved. Microsoft later disputed the premise with a breakdown of its filings; AP said the other named companies had not immediately provided similarly detailed responses. [4][3]

No criminal charge, administrative decision or company-specific written suspension order establishing fraud was located in the Labor Department material reviewed for this report. The public foreign-labor announcements page and PERM portal explained the program but did not display the October 8 company action at publication time. The scope therefore rests on officials’ recorded announcement as independently reported by Reuters and AP; the legal basis, notice procedure and any appeal route remain unconfirmed in the available written record. [3][4][5][6]

Indian reporting centers the workers caught between policy and employer

Jagran’s original Hindi coverage explained that suspension can make it harder for the named employers to sponsor eligible foreign workers for permanent residence and highlighted TCS, Wipro, Infosys and HCL because of their large Indian workforces. India Today likewise reported that the action places new and pending PERM cases on hold while leaving H-1B employment intact. Those impact descriptions are forecasts; neither outlet had a public company-by-company count of affected workers. [8][7][5]

The administration also announced investigations into nine universities’ use of J-1 exchange visas. That is a separate investigative track, not part of the eight-company PERM suspension, and no finding against those universities was established in the reviewed reports. This article therefore does not combine the university allegations with the company action. [4][3]

How the sources compare