US Department of Labor bars major tech firms from green card programme

The United States government has suspended eight technology firms from applying for its green card, or Permanent Labor Certification Programme, which allows companies to hire foreign workers to work permanently in the country.

At a press briefing, US Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, along with Vice President JD Vance and the head of the US Anti-Fraud Task Force, announced that the US labour department will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labour certification applications involving Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe.

“Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost three million foreign workers. They received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labour certifications. That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers,” Sonderling said.

Taking aim at Microsoft, Vice President JD Vance said that while the company laid off 6,000 American workers last year, at the same time the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards.

“That’s a scandalous system we’ve allowed in this country for far too long, but thanks to the work of this task force and the empowerment of the President of the United States we are going to stop because thanks to an ongoing investigation, we suspend the PERM programme for Microsoft, which means they will no longer be able to take those visas and apply for permanent status,” Vance added.

Earlier in March this year, Trump, through an executive order, set up a task force to eliminate fraud, citing widespread fraud, waste and abuse of US government programmes by non-US nationals at the expense of American taxpayers.

While the affected Indian IT firms have been shoring up on both nearshoring as well as local hiring, companies have been facing the Trump administration’s hostile stance on H-1B visas since last year, including fee hikes and changes to the visa selection process.

While the US government is yet to put out details of its investigation into visa fraud, Amrita Tonk, Partner at CMS INDUSLAW, sees any restrictive practices posing operational risks impacting retention and compensation planning.