Vice President JD Vance announced Thursday that the administration is suspending Microsoft, Adobe and six outsourcing firms, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini, from the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program used to sponsor foreign workers for green cards. Labor officials will stop accepting new applications and processing pending ones from the companies. Vance said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards, calling it a scandalous system.
Microsoft pushed back, saying the vast majority of its U.S. employees are Americans and that of the roughly 6,000 H-1B applications it submitted in the last fiscal year, 80 percent were to extend or change the status of existing employees rather than hire new people. CNBC’s review of USCIS visa data cuts both ways: Microsoft did receive more than 6,000 H-1B approvals last year, but two-thirds went to people already working at the company. Notably, Amazon (19,178 approvals) and Meta (6,294), the two largest H-1B sponsors in the country, were not suspended; all eight suspended firms rank in the top 50 sponsors, with Adobe the smallest at number 45. The suspension blocks the path to permanent residency but does not shut down H-1B or cancel existing visas.