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US suspends Infosys, TCS, Wipro from PERM green card programme; filings put on hold
The US has suspended Infosys, TCS, Wipro and five other firms from the PERM green card certification programme. New and pending labor certifications tied to the companies will be paused amid federal investigations and a political fight over foreign-worker hiring.
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4 min
The US administration has suspended eight major technology and IT services firms from the country’s employment-based green card pipeline, halting both new and pending filings under the Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM) for companies that include Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro.
The suspension was announced on October 8 by the Department of Labor, with Vice President JD Vance presenting it as a crackdown on alleged abuse of foreign-worker programmes. Along with the three Indian IT majors, the list includes HCL, Cognizant, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe.
For thousands of employees already in the United States on temporary work visas, the decision threatens to freeze a key step that employers use to sponsor permanent residency. PERM is typically the first formal stage in an employer-backed green card process, requiring certification that a role cannot be filled by a qualified US worker at the required wage.
PERM filings frozen amid probes
Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling said the action is tied to multiple active federal investigations into alleged programme abuses, fraudulent filings, wage undercutting and the displacement of American workers.
The Department of Labor has indicated it will stop accepting new PERM applications connected to the suspended firms and will also pause processing of pending permanent labor certifications linked to them.
Sonderling framed the move as a response to what the administration calls large-scale reliance on foreign labour. He said the companies had requested nearly three million foreign workers since 2009, and that they had received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labour certifications.
The administration’s public messaging has blended the PERM suspension with broader criticism of employment-based immigration programmes. Vance, in comments surrounding the decision, accused Microsoft of abusing the H-1B system and argued that such routes can suppress wages and shut out US workers.
The suspension landed as the administration also sharpened its rhetoric toward universities that bring international students to the United States on exchange programmes, placing corporate hiring and campus visa pathways in the same political frame.
Indian IT workers face longer waits
The immediate impact is procedural but far-reaching: employees whose green card cases depend on their employer’s PERM filing now face an indefinite pause, with no timeline given in the material for when processing could resume.
For Indian nationals, the stakes are especially high. Indian professionals make up a large share of the H-1B workforce and employment-based green card applicants at the affected outsourcing firms, and PERM is the gateway step that allows later immigration petitions to move forward.
The decision also complicates workforce planning for the companies themselves. With PERM filings paused, firms may find it harder to retain US-based staff who were counting on employer sponsorship as a reason to stay, or to persuade recruits to relocate when the route to permanent residency is uncertain.
At the same time, the suspension does not, on the information available, cancel existing visas. It targets the labour certification process that underpins green card sponsorship, not the day-to-day work authorisation that many foreign employees already hold.
Still, the stop on pending cases matters. PERM filings often set the clock for later stages in the green card queue, and delays at the certification stage can ripple through an employee’s long-term status planning.
Political fight over ‘cheap labour’
Vance defended the decision publicly on Friday, pushing back against criticism from Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who sits on the House Immigration Subcommittee and has previously held an H-1B visa.
In a pointed response, Vance wrote: “’Socialism’ apparently means fighting like hell to ensure mega-corporations have a never-ending flow of cheap labour”.
Jayapal said the administration’s move weakens legal immigration and threatens the country’s ability to innovate. She argued the issue carried particular weight for her as the top Democrat on the Immigration Subcommittee, as a former H-1B holder, and as a representative of tens of thousands of Microsoft employees.
The administration’s argument is that companies use programmes meant for targeted skill gaps to import workers at lower cost. Supporters of these visa and green card pathways counter that US employers use them to fill hard-to-staff roles and to compete globally for talent.
The suspension also has an unusual juxtaposition in the Microsoft case. President Donald Trump honoured India-born Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella within hours of the administration’s announcement that Microsoft was among the companies suspended from the PERM programme.
What happens next will turn on the pace and outcomes of the federal investigations referenced by the Department of Labor and on whether the affected firms can regain access to the certification system. For now, the practical effect is a hard stop: no new PERM filings and no movement on pending labour certifications tied to the suspended employers.
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4 min
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