The United States has suspended eight major technology companies — including Indian IT giants Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCLTech and Capgemini, along with Microsoft and Adobe — from the Permanent Labour Certification programme, a key route through which employers sponsor foreign workers for green cards. The announcement, made in Washington on Thursday by Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling with Vice President JD Vance at his side, is one of the most sweeping immigration actions yet against the IT outsourcing industry.
According to the announcement, the US Labour Department will “not accept any new or process any pending” permanent labour certification applications involving these companies. Sonderling said that since 2009, these firms had sought almost three million foreign workers, securing over 230,000 H-1B approvals and more than 100,000 permanent labour certifications — jobs that, he claimed, had been “taken from American workers”.
The Vice President defended the move in sharp terms. Singling out Microsoft — accused of firing 6,000 American workers while obtaining 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards — Vance said: “You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.” Microsoft has pushed back on the figures, saying about 80 per cent of its H-1B applications in the last fiscal year were extensions or status changes for current employees, not new hires. The suspension was announced just hours before President Donald Trump presented the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at a White House event.
So what exactly is PERM? The Permanent Labour Certification is typically the first step in an employment-based green card process. An employer must demonstrate through a prescribed recruitment process that no qualified American workers are available for the position. “H-1B is how they get in, and PERM is how they stay,” Vance said, summarising the administration’s logic. Crucially, the suspension does not cancel existing H-1B visas or already-approved green cards — but workers whose employers cannot file or advance PERM applications face delays, and those caught in India’s already-long green card backlogs could remain tied to their current employers indefinitely.
For Indian professionals, the immediate impact falls on those whose green card process was in the pipeline through one of the named firms. Those with approved certifications are largely unaffected; those with pending or not-yet-filed applications face freezes and delays. Industry watchers warn of knock-on effects on retention, workforce planning and hiring costs for the Indian IT majors, though the allegations remain allegations — the administrative action is not a judicial finding of fraud.
TCS said it will comply with the US order and that it does not expect an impact on its workforce, adding that it plans to hire 15,000 more employees in the US. The move comes just after TCS reported its weakest September-quarter revenue growth in three years — net profit rose 4 per cent quarter-on-quarter to ₹13,884 crore while revenue inched up 1.3 per cent to ₹73,188 crore, with an EBIT margin of 24 per cent.
The development deepens uncertainty for thousands of Indian professionals in the US and adds a fresh geopolitical wrinkle to the India-US technology corridor. Whether the suspension is time-bound or escalates further will be watched closely by the industry — and by every Indian worker waiting on a green card.
