Eight technology companies have been suspended from the federal program that certifies employers to sponsor foreign workers for green cards, the Labor Department announced Thursday. It is the most aggressive move yet by the administration to target the H-1B visa system.
Keith Sonderling, the labor secretary, listed six outsourcing companies that were suspended - Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini - and said Microsoft and Adobe were also suspended due to multiple active federal investigations. The department will not accept new applications, nor process pending ones, involving the eight companies.
JD Vance, the vice president of the administration's Anti-Fraud Task Force, announced the suspension of Microsoft at a White House news conference on H-1B and J-1 visa fraud alongside Sonderling and Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff to the president.
The Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM) is the Labor Department step that must be completed before most employment-based green card petitions. The employer must demonstrate that it tested the labor market and was unable to find a qualified U.S. worker at the prevailing wage.
By suspending the companies, the department will no longer certify new or pending H-1B or green card petitions. It does not affect the status of anyone currently working. The suspension only affects the route to permanent employment, as well as any new sponsored employees.
Sonderling said that the eight companies have collectively requested nearly three million foreign workers since 2009 and received more than 230,000 H-1B visas and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications. Sonderling said this represented hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken away from American workers.
Vance focused on Microsoft, saying no American company had abused the program more. Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year and received about 6,300 H-1B visas and filed thousands of green card applications, Vance said.
"For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with 1½ foreign indentured servants," Vance said. "The message to Microsoft is you've got to hire American workers."
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Adobe's shares were up slightly on the Nasdaq.
Nine universities, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, will be investigated next for bringing in international students that undercut American wages, labor Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito said. Subpoenas have already been served.
The investigations come in the wake of an action the previous day to restrict international students from working in the United States.
The suspensions are the first enforcement actions under the action plan President Trump laid out in his Sept. 18 executive order to have the secretaries of State, Labor and Homeland Security to factor an employer's recent layoffs or plans to lay workers when deciding on H-1B petitions. Vance said at the time that the administration would not allow companies to lay off American workers and replace them with cheaper foreign labor.
The executive order also brought back the $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions that was first implemented in September 2025. The White House has said that registrations by the largest IT outsourcing firms fell 92 percent in response to the proclamation, and requests for consular processing fell nearly 97 percent.
A wage-based system to select H-1B petitioners replaced the H-1B lottery for fiscal 2027.
