US suspends eight tech firms from PERM green-card process, including Microsoft

The U.S. government said on Oct. 8 that it is suspending Microsoft and seven other technology and outsourcing companies from the Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM), a Department of Labor process that is usually an early step in employer-sponsored green-card cases. Officials said new applications would no longer be accepted and pending cases would stop moving for the named firms. The measure concerns PERM filings; it does not itself cancel existing H-1B visas or revoke green cards already issued. [AP’s report](https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-program-vance-microsoft-e7b3a407f822702b269ee277d21343ea) and [Axios’ explainer](https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2026/10/08/jd-vance-microsoft-layoffs-h1b-visas-perm-labor-certification-trump) describe the scope. Vice President JD Vance accused Microsoft of using the system to replace American workers. He cited 6,000 U.S. layoffs alongside 6,300 H-1B approvals and nearly 3,000 green cards in the previous year. Those figures were presented by the administration as evidence of abuse; they do not, by themselves, establish that each visa holder replaced a laid-off employee. Microsoft disputed that framing. The company said about 80% of its roughly 6,000 H-1B filings last fiscal year were extensions or status changes for existing employees. It said the remaining new-hire filings concerned people already legally in the United States and represented about 1% of its U.S. workforce. The administration also named Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. The policy has raised a practical question for workers already in the H-1B system: an H-1B is temporary and tied to employment, while permanent residency can give a worker more freedom to change jobs. A former USCIS adviser quoted by AP argued that blocking green-card sponsorship could therefore make some workers more dependent on their employer—the opposite of the administration’s stated concern about worker vulnerability. The government has alleged fraud, but the public announcement and reporting so far do not establish those allegations as findings. Photo: Satya Nadella at the White House on Sept. 24, 2026 (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster).