Labor Department's PERM freeze leaves H-1B staff near the six-year limit most exposed

On Monday, the worried message will probably come from a manager with an Infosys or Wipro team inside the product org, because both firms are among the eight ^[3]. For an employer sponsoring a foreign worker's green card, PERM is typically where the process begins ^[4]. The available evidence suggests most of that team is not in the queue. Nasscom, the Indian IT industry body, said Indian tech companies operating in the US had sharply cut their reliance on H-1B visas and that relatively few of their workers seek green cards through PERM, Reuters reported ^[18]. Nasscom speaks for those suppliers, so this is their own account. India's foreign ministry said the suspension does not by itself affect the validity of H-1B visas or the status of visa holders and their families ^[5]. Shares in the Indian firms rose in Mumbai on Friday, with TCS up 5.5% by late morning and Infosys up 2.7%, according to IIFL, though TCS had reported quarterly results the day before ^[17].

Teams will tell themselves the risk is on the outsourcers' benches. The filing data points at Microsoft. By GeekWire's figures, Microsoft had about 81 times as many PERM applications ruled on in fiscal 2025 as Amazon ^[19]. Across all employers, the department certified nearly 140,000 PERM applications that year, and about 30% were for software developers, computer systems analysts and data scientists, Axios reported ^[10]. That 30% comes to roughly 42,000 tech-role certifications ^[20].

Vance said the suspension would last "as long as it needs to" ^[8]. Kripa Upadhyay of the Seattle firm Buchalter said she expected lawsuits against it to start by next week ^[14]. "Most people will either be able to wait it out or have time to switch jobs," said Loren Locke, a lawyer in Atlanta ^[12].

Microsoft disputes Vance's charge about laid-off Americans. The company said most of its H-1B filings last year were for people already working there ^[22]. Randhir Jaiswal, the foreign ministry spokesperson, objected to Vance's wording at a briefing in New Delhi ^[1]. "Resorting to terminology that carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations is deeply offensive," Jaiswal said ^[2]. "The steps announced by the US do not advance the shared ambitions of both countries," he said ^[6]. The PERM action comes after a $103,265 fee was proposed for new H-1B visas ^[15]. OpenAI, in August, settled with the US for $3.2m over the way it advertised PERM positions ^[16].

For a manager, two facts about each person decide the response. One is whether their green-card case is a PERM filing with one of the eight as sponsor. The other is how close they are to the six-year H-1B limit ^[11]. A person sponsored by one of the eight and near the limit needs immigration counsel now. In that case the cost of waiting is losing the person, since switching jobs is the exit Locke named ^[12]. For someone sponsored but years from the limit, the 180-day ceiling on a suspension the department imposes on its own makes waiting reasonable ^[13]. Anyone without a PERM case at those firms keeps their H-1B status as it was, according to India's foreign ministry ^[5]. If Nasscom is right, that group includes most contractors ^[18]. The hard tradeoff is for the people near the limit. Waiting costs nothing if the pause ends at 180 days. It costs a team member if an investigation turns the pause into a bar of up to three years ^[13].