The U.S. Suspends Microsoft From the Green-Card Labor Program Used by H-1B Workers

Microsoft can still employ people on H-1B visas. It cannot, as of Thursday, use the main door those workers walk through to a green card. The Labor Department said it will not accept any new permanent labor certification applications involving Microsoft, and will not process pending ones. The same freeze covers Adobe and six IT services firms: Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the list. Vice President JD Vance singled out Microsoft. The program is PERM, the Permanent Labor Certification. It is the step an employer generally has to finish before sponsoring a worker for an employment-based green card, including the test that no qualified and available U.S. worker could fill the role. This is not a cancellation of H-1B status. H-1B is a temporary work visa, usually capped at six years. PERM is the employment path off that visa and onto permanent residency. A worker already in status can keep working. A worker waiting on a pending certification at one of these companies is now stuck in a queue the department says it will not move. What Vance and Sonderling Said Vance’s line, at a Thursday press conference, was that no company had abused the system more than Microsoft, and that the message was to hire American workers. He said, without citing a filing in the remarks as reported, that companies were using PERM to replace Americans and undercut wages. He tied Microsoft’s 2025 layoffs — about 6,000 in his telling; the company said in July it would cut 4,800 jobs, about 2.1 percent of its global workforce — to foreign hiring. “For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” he said. The department said Microsoft and Adobe were suspended because of multiple active federal investigations. Sonderling said the named companies had, since 2009, sought almost three million foreign workers, received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals, and received more than 100,000 permanent labor certifications. Those totals are across the list, not Microsoft alone. Business Insider’s count of certified PERM applications in the first three quarters of this fiscal year put Microsoft first among employers, at 1,504, plus 174 for LinkedIn and Activision. Project Firewall, the department’s enforcement effort, has opened about 200 cases and levied millions in penalties, Reuters reported. Nine universities are also under new probes. The green-card freeze is the corporate half of a wider week. What Microsoft Said Microsoft did not concede the replacement claim. A spokesperson pointed to a Thursday blog post. The company said the vast majority of its U.S. employees are Americans. Of about 6,000 H-1B applications in the last fiscal year, roughly 80 percent were extensions or changes of status for people already on staff, not new hires. The rest, it said, were people already legally in the United States who joined Microsoft, equal to about 1 percent of the U.S. workforce. It said it files only for people who meet the visa standard, and that it builds the workforce by hiring Americans and recruiting abroad. It said it would give the administration more information. That reply answers a hiring charge. It does not restart a pending PERM. An extension keeps someone in the seat. It does not give them a green card. The people most exposed are H-1B employees at these firms who were mid-certification, and new candidates whose sponsors can no longer file. How This Sits Next to the $100,000 Fee The suspension follows a White House proclamation that put a one-time $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions. Federal courts have blocked that fee. The PERM freeze does not need the fee to bite. It uses a certification the department already controls. A company that cannot get a labor certification cannot finish the employment green-card case, fee or no fee. Outsourcing firms that place H-1B workers at client sites and then file PERM are the business model Sonderling described. Microsoft and Adobe are the product companies on a list otherwise made of IT services names. Existing green cards are not revoked by a halt on new and pending certifications. A worker who already has permanent residency is not the subject of Thursday’s order. A worker who was months from it is. What to Watch Whether any of the eight companies sues to force processing of pending cases. How many certifications were in the queue at Microsoft and Adobe when the freeze started. The university probes announced the same day. Whether the $100,000 H-1B fee survives appeal, separate from this suspension. Any Microsoft change in who it sponsors while the investigations Sonderling cited are open. The United States did not end H-1B for Microsoft on Thursday. It stopped the labor certifications those workers use to become permanent residents, at Microsoft, Adobe, and six of the largest IT contractors, and it did so while investigations are still open. Vance’s number and Microsoft’s 80 percent are now the two accounts of the same workforce. Only the department’s freeze is in effect. Digital8Hub will update if a court orders the pending cases processed, or if the department names a reinstatement condition.