The United States has suspended a key green-card sponsorship route for Tata Consultancy Services, Cognizant, Infosys and five other technology companies, disrupting the process through which their foreign employees seek permanent residence.
The restrictions cover the Permanent Labor Certification programme, commonly known as PERM. The US Department of Labor will stop accepting new applications and processing pending applications involving the affected companies. Wipro, HCLTech, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe are also included in the suspension, announced on October 8 by Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling.
Vice President JD Vance breaks down the data: "If you are working as an H-1B visa in the United States of America, you’re earning $20,000 less than an American citizen hired in the same position. If you were brought in by one of these foreign outsourcing firms, you’re making $48,000 less than an American citizen in a similar position. So I’m sure that everybody here understands the game that is being played. You bring in indentured servants from outside the country, you lay off American workers and, if you’re a corporation, you make a ton of money by under cutting the wages of American workers, replacing them with people who frankly shouldn’t be in the United States of America to begin with."
— Vice President JD Vance (@VP) October 8, 2026
The administration accused companies of misusing employment-based immigration programmes to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labour. Sonderling cited ongoing federal investigations, while Vance singled out Microsoft over its hiring practices. The allegations have not been established as findings of wrongdoing against all the companies covered by the announcement.
Cognizant had already faced a PERM suspension announced in September. The wider action now extends the uncertainty to employees across several of the largest technology and outsourcing businesses operating in the United States.
TCS said on October 9 that it did not expect a material impact on its workforce strategy or client engagements. The company said its PERM applications had been in “single digits” over the past two years and reiterated plans to recruit 15,000 additional employees in the US over five years. Its American hiring strategy, it said, centres on local recruitment, including hiring from campuses.
Microsoft also defended its practices. The company said 80% of its H-1B filings in 2025 concerned extensions or changes of status for existing employees. The remaining filings involved new employees already legally in the United States and represented approximately 1% of its US workforce.
For employees, the immediate issue is the interruption of a permanent-residency process that is separate from permission to work temporarily. Under the PERM requirements, employers generally need labour certification before submitting an employment-based immigrant petition. They must demonstrate that sufficient qualified and available American workers cannot fill the position and that employing a foreign worker will not adversely affect comparable workers’ wages or working conditions.
The suspension does not itself cancel existing H-1B visas or prohibit the companies from continuing to employ workers who hold valid status. However, it blocks an important step towards permanent residence for employees whose cases depend on PERM certification.
For Indian professionals already facing lengthy employment-based green-card queues. A PERM filing generally establishes the worker’s priority date, which determines their place in the immigrant-visa queue. Employees unable to file through a suspended employer face a further delay before that waiting period can begin.
The process was already slow. The government’s published processing figures show that PERM applications undergoing analyst review took an average of 336 calendar days in August 2026. This covers labour certification alone, rather than the full wait for a green card.
Employees approaching the normal six-year H-1B limit may face additional complications because some extensions depend on the timing or approval of immigration filings. Those with approved immigrant petitions may be in a different position. With no clear end date for the suspensions, affected workers remain uncertain about when their employers can resume this stage of sponsorship.
