Microsoft, Adobe and Infosys lose green-card route: what changes for H-1B staff

The Labor Department suspended Microsoft, Adobe and six major IT outsourcers from the Permanent Labor Certification program on Oct 8, cutting off the employer-sponsored green-card pathway at some of the largest names in tech and consulting. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the suspensions and said they will last until hiring rules change.

The freeze covers Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini. Adobe was suspended because it faces multiple active federal investigations, Sonderling said.

What the action does not do is cancel or invalidate existing H-1B visas. The suspension targets PERM — the employer-sponsored route to permanent residency — rather than non-immigrant work visas, and it does not automatically deport affected workers. Current H-1B holders are not directly affected. What is frozen is future green-card sponsorship at these firms, indefinitely, until the hiring rules change.

The political case came from Vice-President J.D. Vance, who said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers in 2025 while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. He called the company the worst abuser of the system. Those figures are Vance's; the layoffs and visa counts are his characterization of Microsoft's record.

Separately, nine universities — including Harvard, Yale and Stanford — were opened to probes for possible visa abuse. The concern raised alongside those probes is damage to research and to the wider US economy.

Taken together, the two actions mark the broadest strike yet against skilled-worker immigration programs, according to reporting on the announcement. But the scope is narrower than the reaction suggests. No company has been told how many pending green-card applications are stalled, and the sources do not provide a per-company number. The specific hiring-rule changes that would lift the suspensions have not been named. Nor have the nine universities been identified beyond the three named, or the specific visa-abuse allegations they face.

What is clear: the route to a green card at these eight employers is closed for now. The visas their workers already hold are not.