WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration on Thursday suspended Microsoft, Adobe and six major information-technology outsourcing firms from the federal program that lets employers sponsor skilled foreign workers for permanent residency, accusing the companies of using temporary visas and green-card filings to displace American employees.
Vice President JD Vance, who chairs an administration anti-fraud task force, said the Labor Department will not accept new applications or process pending ones under the Permanent Labor Certification program, known as PERM, for Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. Existing H-1B visas are not canceled. The freeze applies to the labor-certification step that most employers must clear before petitioning for employment-based green cards.
“Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” Vance said at a White House briefing.
He singled out the Redmond, Washington-based company, saying it laid off about 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from roughly 6,300 H-1B approvals and nearly 3,000 green-card filings.
“If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” he said.
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said Microsoft and Adobe, including six outsourcing companies, were suspended because of multiple active federal investigations. Since 2009, he said, the eight companies together have requested almost 3 million foreign workers, received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and obtained more than 100,000 permanent labor certifications.
“We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies,” Sonderling said.
.@Sonderling47: "I am hereby suspending from the Permanent Labor Certification Program some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world — Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini — and also, due to multiple active federal investigations, @USDOL is suspending… https://t.co/ENyAFHSo93 pic.twitter.com/DZXcRMp22L
Microsoft and Adobe have yet to release a statement regarding Thursday’s announcement.
An H-1B lets a company employ a foreign worker in a specialty occupation for a limited period, generally up to six years. PERM is the Department of Labor’s finding that no qualified, willing and available U.S. worker can fill the job — a prerequisite for most employer-sponsored green cards.
The Department of Labor’s move lands hardest in the Seattle area. Microsoft’s headquarters and largest U.S. workforce are in Redmond; Adobe maintains a substantial engineering presence in the region. Both firms have long ranked among the heavier users of employment-based visas. Cutting off the green-card pipeline does not force current H-1B employees to leave, but it freezes their path to permanent status through these employers and raises the cost of retaining them if competitors can still sponsor.
Thursday’s action continues a broader second-term effort by the Trump administration to raise the price and narrow the use of skilled-worker visas.
In September 2025 the White House imposed a $100,000 fee on certain new H-1B entries from abroad. Lottery registrations at several large IT firms fell sharply the following cycle — by more than 90% at some outsourcing companies, according to Department of Homeland Security data reported by Bloomberg Law.
Federal judges in Massachusetts and California later blocked the fee, ruling the administration lacked authority to impose what amounted to a tax without congressional approval or proper rulemaking; a second injunction in late September 2026 covered a one-year extension of the proclamation.
DHS on Wednesday has separately proposed a fee of roughly $103,000 through formal rulemaking, a step that remains subject to challenge. The Trump administration has also scrutinized optional practical training for foreign graduates and, on Thursday, said they had opened inquiries into nine universities — including Harvard, Yale, Stanford and MIT — over alleged misuse of J-1 exchange visas.
Author: Mario Lotmore
