Microsoft Suspended From Green-Card Sponsorship Step in Targeted PERM Action
The Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from the permanent labor certification program that allows employers to sponsor foreign workers for permanent U.S. residence. The suspension also applies to Adobe, Cognizant and Infosys. The Verge
The program is widely known as PERM. Yahoo Finance In practical terms, the Labor Department will stop accepting new certification applications from these companies and will stop processing their pending cases. TechCrunch The halt is procedural. It freezes the employer filing step that must come before a worker can move toward a green card, much like pausing the first stamp in a multi-step approval.
Vice President JD Vance claimed the program has become rife with fraud over the past several years. He also claimed no company has abused it more than Microsoft. Administration officials paired the suspensions with allegations of fraud and abuse by Microsoft and other major IT firms. New York Post
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling linked the action to filing volume. He claimed Microsoft and Adobe requested almost 3 million foreign workers. He further claimed the two companies received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications. Those numbers were presented as administration claims, not as independent findings.
Vance offered a separate comparison focused on Microsoft. He said the company laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. The remarks were reported Oct. 8, 2026, and connect the suspension to wider criticism of how large technology employers use employment-based immigration.
For clarity, PERM and H-1B are separate tracks. H-1B covers temporary authorization for skilled work. PERM is the labor-market test that usually comes before an employer-sponsored green card. The freeze does not cancel existing visas or green cards already granted. It blocks new sponsorships and leaves pending cases without processing while the suspension lasts.
The broader context for employers is workforce planning, not daily operations. PERM cases already take a long time, with recruitment records, prevailing-wage decisions and audit risk built in. Affected companies must now have immigration lawyers sort pending cases, advise workers waiting in line, and decide where future sponsorships can be filed. Teams that mix U.S. citizens, H-1B holders and green-card applicants can see uneven results inside the same company.
In my view, the method here is as important as the pause itself. Rather than rewriting PERM rules for all employers, the administration is suspending named high-volume filers to press its fraud claim. That keeps the program in place while concentrating pressure on a few companies. If the suspensions hold, other large sponsors will likely review their own filings. If they are narrowed or lifted, the compliance lesson around volume, paperwork and public attention will still stand.
Looking further ahead, sponsored hiring is likely to continue because specialized skills remain hard to find. The path, however, is now less predictable. Employers with clearer hiring records and less reliance on any single visa category should adjust more easily to enforcement changes of this kind.
