BENGALURU: The US government on Thursday has suspended several major technology companies from the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) programme, a key step in the employment-based green card process, amid allegations of abuse and fraud in US visa programmes.
US Vice-President JD Vance announced the action alongside Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, who said the companies affected include Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. Microsoft and Adobe were also suspended, with the Department of Labor citing multiple federal investigations.
Sonderling said: "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."
The PERM programme is administered by the US Department of Labor.
It generally requires an employer sponsoring a foreign worker for permanent residence to show that there are not sufficient qualified US workers available for the job and that employing the foreign worker will not adversely affect wages and working conditions.
PERM is one of the main stages before an employer can proceed with an employment-based green card application.
The action does not mean that employees of the affected companies automatically lose their H-1B visas or existing green cards.
Instead, it affects the companies’ ability to use the PERM process for employment-based permanent residency. It could therefore delay green card applications for foreign workers whose employers have not yet completed the labor-certification stage.
Notably, the announcement is part of a wider crackdown by the Donald Trump administration on employment-based immigration.
Vance accused companies of using H-1B workers to replace American employees and said the programme had become "rife with fraud".
The Vice President specifically criticised Microsoft, saying: "The message to Microsoft is you’ve got to hire American workers."
He alleged that Microsoft had laid off about 6,000 American workers while receiving thousands of H-1B approvals and filing PERM applications.
Indian technology companies are particularly affected because Indian nationals account for a large share of H-1B workers, while firms such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Cognizant have historically been significant users of the US employment-visa system.
The Labor Department’s action is part of ongoing federal investigations into alleged misuse of employment-visa programmes.
The companies named in Thursday’s announcement have not been publicly found guilty of visa fraud as a result of this action, the allegations remain subject to investigation.
