Washington: The US Thursday suspended eight IT firms, including India’s Tata, Infosys and Wipro, from a programme that allows them to apply for green cards for foreign workers, contending that the practice has shut Americans out of the job market.
The announcement was made by Vice President JD Vance, Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling and Attorney General Todd Blanche as part of action under the aegis of the US Anti-Fraud Task Force. “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,” Sonderling said.
He said the Department of Labour was also suspending Microsoft and Adobe from the programme due to multiple active federal investigations. “There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft,” Vance said. “Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers in 2025 after certifying that it could not find qualified American employees — yet the company was approved for more than 6,000 H-1Bs and filed 3,682 PERM applications, including nearly 1,000 applications for the same positions as the laid-off American workers,” the VP said. Sonderling said the Department of Labour would not accept any new or process any pending permanent labour certification applications involving these companies.
“Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost three million foreign workers. They’ve received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labour certifications,” Sonderling said. “That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers,” Sonderling said. Indian professionals account for more than 70 per cent of all approved H-1B petitions annually. The VP referred to foreign workers hired on H-1B visas as “foreign indentured servants” and the companies using the programme as “visa mills”.
