For lakhs of Indian engineers, the American dream just got a longer queue. On Thursday, the United States suspended eight of the world’s largest tech employers from the US green card programme’s PERM certification process, the mandatory gateway to an employment-based green card. Six of them are the IT firms that run India’s tech economy: Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. Microsoft and Adobe were barred too.
This is not a fee hike or a paperwork tweak. For anyone currently on the green card track through one of these firms, the door just slammed shut.
Why Washington says it did this
US Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling made the announcement at a White House Fraud Task Force press conference on October 8, flanked by Vice President JD Vance. Sonderling was blunt:
“I am hereby suspending from the Permanent Labour Certification Programme some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini.”
The administration’s case is built on scale. Since 2009, Sonderling said, these companies requested nearly 3 million foreign workers, won over 230,000 H-1B approvals, and received more than 100,000 PERM certifications. His verdict: “hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers.”
Vance added a message aimed at Redmond: “Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers.”
For Microsoft and Adobe, the Economic Times reports the suspension is tied to multiple ongoing federal investigations involving the two companies.
What freezing the US green card programme actually does
PERM is not the green card itself. It is the certification a US employer must obtain from the Department of Labor before it can sponsor a worker for permanent residence: proof that no qualified, willing and available American worker exists for the job.
From now on, the department will not accept any new or pending PERM applications involving any of the eight suspended companies. Cases already in the pipeline involving them stop being processed.
The suspension doesn’t cancel anyone’s existing H-1B visa or green card. But for the thousands of Indian engineers sitting mid-process through Infosys or TCS, this is the worst kind of limbo: their applications are frozen, and the sponsoring employer is barred from restarting them. And the scale of the exposure is staggering: nearly three-quarters of all approved H-1B visas go to workers from India, according to the Associated Press.
Why this hits harder than the H-1B fee fight
Earlier this year, the headlines were all about the $100,000 H-1B application fee. Loud, but narrow: employers could absorb it, pass it on, or work around it.
This is structurally different. PERM suspension doesn’t tax the pipeline; it severs it. An H-1B worker can renew and keep working, but without PERM there is no path from temporary work to permanent residency through these employers. The green card dream isn’t taxed anymore. For these firms’ employees, it’s suspended.
That distinction matters for the firms too. Cognizant, Infosys and TCS made “onsite in the US” the defining aspiration of an Indian IT career. Take away the green card route and that whole deputation model starts wobbling.
What India Inc. is saying
The pushback came overnight from NASSCOM, which said Indian IT firms have substantially reduced their reliance on H-1B visas while steadily increasing local hiring to build up their US workforce: the suspension punishes the model these firms have already been moving away from.
The market delivered its own verdict this morning: TCS reported its Q2 numbers alongside the PERM bombshell, posting a 15% year-on-year rise in net profit to Rs 13,884 crore plus a Rs 12 interim dividend. Strong earnings, frozen green cards, all in the same session.
What this means for Indian tech workers
First, expect a scramble. Workers mid-PERM with the suspended firms will need alternatives: different employers, different visa routes, or waiting it out.
Second, watch the stock prices and the bench. These firms employ millions in India, and the American onsite premium is built into their margins. If the green card path stays closed, the industry will have to rethink how it staffs US projects.
Third, the timing is political, not accidental. This comes from a Fraud Task Force headed by the Vice President himself, in a “hire American” administration.
The same week Washington froze the US green card programme for Indian IT firms, New Delhi was deepening its reset with Western partners through the India-Canada security talks. The diplomatic track is warming while the economic one freezes. Indian workers, whether engineers in the US or crew on tankers in the Gulf, keep getting caught in between.
What to watch next
Three things. First, how long the suspension lasts and whether the firms challenge it in court; an indefinite PERM ban is exactly the kind of thing that gets litigated. Second, whether the ban expands to more companies; the administration’s numbers suggest the list is not finished. Third, how the firms respond: double down on delivery from India, or hire American talent as Vance wants?
One editorial aside: for a decade, every Indian techie family had the same plan. Crack the interview, get the onsite, start the green card process, wait it out. Washington just rewrote the plan mid-page, and no one handed out a new one. That is the real story here, not the press conference.