Washington's green-card freeze singles out six IT outsourcers alongside Microsoft and Adobe

Who is on the list

Visa volume alone did not decide who was named. Meta, Amazon and Alphabet's Google remain free to use PERM ^[5], although Amazon led all employers in H-1B approvals so far in fiscal 2026, ahead of Tata and Infosys ^[6].

The eight arrived by two stated routes. Sonderling said Microsoft and Adobe were suspended because both companies face multiple active federal investigations ^[4]. He named the other six as a category. "I am hereby suspending from the Permanent Labour Certification Programme some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini," Sonderling said ^[3]. WIRED reported that he said the agency is investigating whether the companies committed fraud, undercutting American workers by hiring foreign employees ^[35]. No criminal charges have been brought in the labour investigation, according to TNW ^[28].

Rajiv Dabhadkar, founder of the National Organization For Software and Technology Professionals, puts the target at the level of a business model. According to Dabhadkar, Washington is no longer looking only at whether an H-1B worker is legally qualified, and is increasingly questioning the business model through which foreign labour is recruited, deployed and paid ^[34]. Six of the eight names fit that model by Sonderling's own description ^[3].

The tool has been used before. TNW reported that the Labor Department's inspector general opened a nationwide H-1B and PERM fraud investigation in July, citing fraudulent applications, wage kickbacks and benching, and in September held new filings from Cognizant and the data firm Cloudera ^[26]. Cognizant is on Thursday's list as well ^[1].

What stops and what keeps running

PERM is the step in which the Labor Department certifies to US Citizenship and Immigration Services that not enough qualified US workers are available for a job, and that hiring the foreign worker will not affect the wages and conditions of similar American workers ^[7]. Employers start it, not workers ^[7]. "We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies," Sonderling said ^[2].

TNW put the weight on new filings. Its report said cases already filed or approved are not cancelled, and that the department can hold applications under 20 CFR 656.31 until an investigation finishes ^[8]. Taken with Sonderling's words, a pending case at the eight firms stays in the queue, unprocessed, for as long as the investigation runs.

Current visa status is the settled part. TNW's separate report said the H-1B program is unaffected and issued green cards remain valid, so H-1B workers at the eight can keep their jobs while their employers cannot start a green card for them through PERM ^[9]. New H-1B filings are less certain. WIRED reported it was unclear whether the move affects employees' ability to apply for H-1B visas, and that the Office of the Vice President and the Labor Department did not respond to its request for clarity ^[10].

The six-year limit

TNW's line that nobody's current visa status changes ^[8] is accurate for this week. The cost arrives later, on each worker's visa calendar. H-1B status generally runs for up to six years ^[11]. US rules let certain H-1B workers extend past that limit once they reach specified stages of the employment-based green-card process ^[12]. A worker at one of the eight firms whose PERM case is held, or whose employer had planned to file one, cannot reach those stages while the suspension lasts ^[40].

We think the cost therefore falls on workers in the later years of H-1B status, at dates set by each worker's own history, and grows with each month the hold runs. The reports do not say how many of the eight firms' US staff have PERM cases pending or planned. CNA described the industry scale: many IT firms employ hundreds of thousands of workers who start on temporary visas such as the H-1B and later seek permanent residency, and recruiting foreign talent could become harder because many overseas workers see the path to permanent residency as a key reason to take a job ^[31].

Two sets of numbers

Sonderling's case rests on totals. Since 2009, he said, the eight companies requested almost three million foreign workers and received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and more than 100,000 permanent labour certifications ^[13]. "That's hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers," Sonderling said, according to CNBC as reported by Quartz ^[14]. The approvals come to about 8% of the workers requested ^[37]. CNA reported that Vance made the replacement claim without citing specific evidence ^[15].

The Microsoft figures shift between reports. Al Jazeera reported Vance saying Microsoft let go 6,000 US workers last year while securing 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards ^[16]. The Times of India had him citing over 6,000 H-1B approvals and over 3,600 permanent labour certification applications ^[18]. "If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants," Vance said ^[17]. On Al Jazeera's figures, the visas alone come to 1.05 per laid-off worker. Adding the green cards brings the ratio to roughly 1.55 ^[38].

Microsoft's answer concerns who the filings were for. The company said about 80% of its roughly 6,000 H-1B applications in the last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of existing employees, and that it pays H-1B staff on par with others in equivalent roles ^[20]. "The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our U.S. workforce," Microsoft's statement said ^[21]. On the company's percentages, about 1,200 filings were for new hires ^[39]. WIRED's count put Microsoft fifth among H-1B employers, with 6,258 visas approved in 2025 and 3,688 so far in 2026 ^[19].

The exposure past the eight

Capgemini shows how much of an outsourcer's business sits in the US. It is the only European company named, and the Paris company employs 421,000 people and took EUR 1,721M from North America in the first quarter, 29% of group revenue and its fastest-growing region, TNW reported ^[29]. TNW also cited Capgemini's own research institute: 86% of large organisations have significant exposure to foreign or externally controlled supply chains, and 36% would need more than a year to leave a critical provider ^[30].

The one-year figure is the useful one for a company whose US delivery runs through any of the six. In our view, a client that cannot leave a provider within a year carries that provider's staffing limits for at least that long. We'd expect this quarter's decision for such clients to be about information: which staff on the account hold H-1B status, how far into six years they are, and whether a PERM filing was part of keeping them. Those answers set next quarter's choice among paying for replacements, accepting turnover on the account and moving the work. Cognizant, Infosys and Tata did not immediately respond to WIRED's request for comment ^[32].

The policy argument has named advocates on each side. "It is a fallacy to think that you can protect American workers by keeping skilled foreign workers out of the country. You think that foreign talent competes with Americans within our borders, they'll certainly compete with Americans by working abroad," said Chad Sparber, director of the Lampert Institute for Civic and Global Affairs at Colgate University ^[33]. Jobs Now, a group of US citizens working in big tech, says it helped Americans apply to nearly 500,000 jobs across 7,000 employers between last January and July. "Every job in America should be offered to an American first, no exceptions," the group told WIRED ^[36].

How it ends

The record holds two end conditions. TNW tied the hold to the investigation: the department can keep applications under 20 CFR 656.31 until an investigation finishes ^[8]. Vance tied it to conduct. He said the suspensions would last "as long as it needs to," with the administration seeking changes to the companies' hiring practices ^[23]. "So we're going to continue to support Microsoft and have a great relationship with Microsoft, but we're also going to deny them the ability to apply for these permanent residencies until they show that they are going to get serious about putting American workers first," Vance said, according to CNBC as reported by Quartz ^[22].

Two other exits exist. The affected companies can challenge the decision in federal court, according to the Times of India ^[24], and the administration's one-time $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions has been blocked by federal court orders, CNA reported ^[25]. An earlier PERM dispute ended in a payment: the Justice Department took $3.2M from OpenAI in August over how it advertised PERM roles, TNW reported ^[27]. Vance's condition, a showing on American hiring, is a term a settlement can carry, and we'd expect some of the eight to test that route before any court rules.

For the eight firms' H-1B staff, this quarter changes nothing in status ^[9]. Each month the hold runs after that is a month of the six-year limit spent without the green-card stage that would extend it ^[40].