Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said Thursday the Labor Department is suspending Microsoft, Adobe and six of the largest IT outsourcing firms from the Permanent Labor Certification Program, the step most employers must clear before sponsoring a foreign worker for a green card.
Sonderling made the announcement at a White House press conference on visa fraud, with Vance standing beside him. “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 — and also, due to multiple active federal investigations, the Department of Labor is suspending Microsoft and Adobe from the program,” he said, in remarks posted by the White House rapid-response account.
“We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies,” Sonderling said. He said that since 2009 the named companies had requested almost 3 million foreign workers, received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and more than 100,000 permanent labor certifications. “That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers,” he said. “The Department of Labor is taking historic action by shutting down the pipeline of systemic fraud.”
Vance singled out Microsoft. “There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft,” he said. He said the company laid off 6,000 American workers last year while receiving about 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. “If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replace that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” he said. The White House account put the PERM figure at 3,682 applications, including nearly 1,000 for the same positions as the laid-off American workers.
“Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” Vance said. He said the administration would keep working with the company but would “deny them the ability to apply for these permanent residencies until they show that they are going to get serious about putting American workers first.”
The Permanent Labor Certification process, known as PERM, is run by the Labor Department. Before most employment-based green cards can move forward, an employer has to show that no able-bodied, willing, and qualified U.S. worker is available for the job and that hiring the foreign worker will not hurt the wages or working conditions of U.S. workers. A certification is not itself a green card. It is the labor-market test that comes first.
The six outsourcers are the firms that staff U.S. companies with workers brought in on temporary visas, then often move those workers toward permanent residency. Cognizant is a Teaneck, New Jersey, IT services company. Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and HCL Technologies are based in India. Capgemini is based in France. Microsoft and Adobe, both U.S. software companies, were suspended separately, Sonderling said, because of active federal investigations.
Microsoft pushed back. In a statement provided by spokeswoman Kaitlin Haskins, the company told Reuters it “only files H-1B petitions for those who meet the rigorous standards of this visa category” and that it builds its workforce by “strengthening this country’s talent pipeline, hiring American workers, and attracting the best talent from around the world.” Microsoft said about 80 percent of its H-1B filings in the last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of people already on staff, not to hire new workers, and that the remaining filings for new employees were for people already legally in the United States and equaled about 1 percent of its U.S. workforce. It said H-1B employees are paid the same as other employees doing comparable work. Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, HCL, Wipro and Capgemini did not immediately comment. Tata Consultancy Services declined to comment, Reuters reported.
Vance also said nine universities, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, would be investigated over what the administration called misuse of exchange-visitor visas to undercut American wages. Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito said subpoenas had already been served, Reuters reported. The university probes are separate from the company suspensions.
The announcement follows the administration’s Project Firewall effort and a White House proclamation that put a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions for workers hired from abroad. Reuters reported that Project Firewall has opened about 200 cases and assessed millions of dollars in penalties. The PERM suspension does not, by itself, cancel existing H-1B visas; however it does stop the named companies from using the labor certification that is the usual on-ramp from a temporary work visa to a green card.
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Christina Botteri is the Executive Editor of The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow her on X at @christinakb.
