The Trump administration on Thursday suspended Microsoft, Adobe and six major IT companies, including Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro and HCL, from a key US programme used by employers to sponsor skilled foreign workers for permanent residency.
Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling said the companies had requested nearly three million foreign workers since 2009, arguing that the practice had shut Americans out of the job market.
“Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost three million foreign workers. They’ve received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labour certifications…That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers,” Sonderling said.
“The H-1B visa program is meant to allow companies to bring in really the best of the best from outside the United States of America for positions that are completely impossible to fill with American workers. Unfortunately, the program has become rife with fraud,” Vice-President JD Vance said while announcing the action with Sonderling.
“Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” Vance said.
The move marks a sharp escalation in Washington’s crackdown on alleged abuse of foreign-worker programmes and puts some of the world’s biggest technology companies directly in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.
Sonderling said the Labour Department was suspending Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini from the Permanent Labour Certification (PERM) programme. Microsoft and Adobe were also being suspended from the programme amid multiple active federal investigations.
The department will not accept new or process pending PERM applications involving the companies.
The action does not cancel existing H-1B visas held by employees of these companies. PERM is a separate process and is generally required before an employer can file petitions for most employment-based green cards. Under the programme, employers must establish that there are no qualified, willing and available US workers for a particular job.
The suspension could nevertheless disrupt the long-term immigration plans of foreign professionals, particularly Indian technology workers whose path to permanent residency depends on employer-sponsored green cards.
Vance accused Microsoft of abusing the system, alleging that the company laid off 6,000 American workers in 2025 while subsequently receiving more than 6,000 H-1B approvals and filing 3,682 PERM applications, including nearly 1,000 for positions involving workers it had laid off.
The action comes amid a wider Trump administration campaign against what it describes as misuse of the H-1B and other foreign-worker programmes.
The administration is also expanding scrutiny beyond technology companies. Nine major US universities, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, are being investigated over alleged misuse of the J-1 exchange visitor programme. Labour Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito said subpoenas had already been issued.
For Indian IT professionals, Thursday’s decision could have implications well beyond the companies directly named. Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL and Cognizant are among the major Indian technology companies with substantial operations in the US.
The move opens a significant new front in the Trump administration’s foreign-worker crackdown — targeting not the H-1B visa directly, but the green-card pipeline through which temporary skilled workers seek permanent residency in the United States.
