Labor Department suspends Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys and Tata from PERM

The U.S. Labor Department has suspended Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys and Tata from the PERM programme, the permanent labour certification that lets an employer sponsor a worker for a green card. Officials announced the step on Thursday. Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling said the department is investigating whether the firms committed fraud by undercutting American workers.

PERM is the Labour Department's finding that no able, willing and qualified U.S. worker is available for a permanent job, and that hiring a foreign worker will not hurt wages and conditions. For many H-1B holders it is the required step before an employer can file an immigrant petition. Cutting a company off from PERM does not, by itself, cancel existing H-1B visas. It blocks the usual bridge from a temporary skilled visa to residence for new cases at those employers.

Vice President JD Vance singled out Microsoft at a press conference. "There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft," he said. The department's list is wider than that sentence. Adobe is on it. So are three large information-technology firms, Cognizant, Infosys and Tata, whose U.S. delivery model has long depended on H-1B staffing.

Microsoft answered through representative Kaitlin Haskins. The company said it "only files H-1B petitions for those who meet the rigorous standards of this visa category," and that it builds its workforce by "strengthening this country's talent pipeline, hiring American workers, and attracting the best talent from around the world." The statement does not say how many PERM applications are in the queue, or whether the firm will contest the suspension.

The distinction between the visa and the green-card step is the one employees will feel first. An H-1B is temporary, generally six years, with extensions in some cases once a green-card process has started. PERM is the recruitment test inside that process. A suspension stops new certifications. It leaves open the question of applications already filed and not decided. The department did not publish that split on Thursday.

Sonderling's fraud language is an allegation attached to an investigation, not a finding. The firms have not been charged in the accounts of Thursday's announcement. A suspension while an inquiry runs is an administrative act. It still changes hiring. A worker who joined on an H-1B with the expectation of a PERM filing in year three or four now has that filing blocked at five named employers.

Infosys and Tata are Indian groups. Cognizant is a U.S.-listed IT services firm with deep Indian operations. Adobe and Microsoft are product companies. The list mixes the two models the H-1B argument usually separates: outsourcing firms that place workers at client sites, and large software firms that hire into their own offices. Vance's sentence collapsed that mix onto Microsoft. The department's action did not.

No count of affected workers was released. Microsoft has been among the largest H-1B users for years. Without a fresh figure from the department, the scale of the suspension is the five names, not a headcount. The remedy Sonderling described is an investigation. The penalty already in force is exclusion from new PERM filings.

The next document that would clarify the order is the notice to each firm: the effective date, the treatment of pending cases, and the condition for reinstatement. None of that was in the Thursday statements carried by Wired. Until it is, the public fact is the list, the investigation, Vance's charge against Microsoft, and Microsoft's denial that it files for anyone who fails the visa standard.

Employees in the middle of a PERM recruitment, the newspaper-ad stage the department requires before a certification, are the group with the least information. A recruitment that has already been paid for can still be rejected if the employer is off the programme. The department did not say whether those open recruitments will be processed. That silence is the practical hole in Thursday's announcement.