The reported suspension of eight major technology companies from the US Permanent Labour Certification Programme, or PERM, does more than interrupt a visa process. It puts pressure on the employment model through which Indian technology professionals have built long-term careers in the United States: entry through the H-1B system, continued employment with a sponsoring company and eventual movement towards permanent residency.
The US Department of Labour’s action, announced by Vice President J D Vance, Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling and Attorney General Todd Blanche under the Anti-Fraud Task Force initiative, targets companies including TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, HCL, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe, according to the report. The department is reported to have stopped accepting fresh PERM applications from the companies and to be withholding processing of applications already pending.
That distinction is important. PERM is not an H-1B visa and the reported suspension does not, by itself, cancel the H-1B status of employees already in the United States. It affects the employer-sponsored permanent residency route that many foreign workers use after entering the country on a temporary work visa. For Indian professionals, who account for more than 70% of approved H-1B petitions each year according to the report, the difference between temporary work authorisation and a credible route to permanent residency is central to career and family decisions.
PERM is the first major employer-side stage in the employment-based green-card process. An employer must obtain certification from the Department of Labour that it could not find a willing and qualified US worker for the position and that hiring the foreign national would not adversely affect wages or working conditions. After that certification, the employer can proceed with later stages of the green-card application.
The system therefore links immigration status to the internal staffing decisions of a company. A worker may be legally employed, performing a specialised role and paying taxes in the US, but still depend on the employer to begin and advance the permanent-residency process. If the employer cannot file a new PERM application, the worker’s green-card timeline may not start. If the worker is approaching the six-year H-1B limit and has not reached the required stages of the employment-based process, the consequences can become more immediate.
Kuldip Kumar, partner at Mainstay Tax Advisors LLP, told the Times of India that the suspension does not by itself affect the validity of H-1B status for employees already in the US. He said the impact could be greater for H-1B workers nearing the six-year limit who depend on the PERM-based green-card process to extend their stay.
The reported action also exposes the institutional logic behind the current US policy shift. American officials are not presenting the issue only as a question of whether individual foreign workers are qualified. Their stated concern is whether employers, staffing companies and labour intermediaries have used the system in ways that reduce wages or disadvantage American workers.
Rajiv Dabhadkar, founder of the National Organization for Software and Technology Professionals, described the change as a shift in scrutiny from the legal eligibility of an H-1B worker to the business model through which foreign labour is recruited, deployed and paid. His distinction is significant for Indian IT companies, whose US operations have historically combined large-scale recruitment in India with project-based deployment and client contracts in America.
Dabhadkar gave the example of a US technology position valued at $150,000. If an intermediary recruits an H-1B worker and pays the worker substantially less than the economic value of the position, the difference can become the intermediary’s margin. The policy question, in that case, is not simply whether an Indian worker is replacing an American worker. It is whether the labour market is being organised around transparent wages or labour arbitrage.
The US officials cited employment and immigration numbers to support their case. Sonderling said the affected companies had requested almost three million foreign workers since 2009, received more than 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and obtained more than 100,000 permanent labour certifications. He characterised those figures as representing employment opportunities that could otherwise have gone to American workers.
Vice President Vance also alleged that Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers in 2025 while certifying that it could not find suitably qualified US workers for certain jobs. He said Microsoft had received approval for more than 6,000 H-1B visas and submitted more than 3,600 permanent labour certification applications. The report does not include responses from the companies to the allegations, and the companies have the option of challenging the action in federal court.
For Indian professionals, the immediate impact is likely to differ according to where they are in the migration and employment cycle. Employees already working at a suspended company retain their H-1B status for now, but those whose employers have not started the green-card process may face greater uncertainty. Xiao Wang, CEO of Boundless Immigration, said that workers near the six-year H-1B limit without an approved I-140 could face serious choices if their employer cannot begin the PERM process.
The second group consists of professionals seeking to enter the US through the affected companies. The report describes these firms as among the largest H-1B sponsors for workers from India. If PERM applications are suspended while H-1B registrations are already lower, the traditional consulting-led route from India to the US becomes less dependable. This does not mean that all routes to US employment have closed, but it does weaken the pipeline that has supported large numbers of Indian engineers over several decades.
The distinction between senior engineers in US technology companies and early-career or mid-level professionals in Indian IT consulting firms is also becoming more relevant. Wang said senior engineers at US technology companies were comparatively insulated, while early-career and mid-level workers at Indian IT consulting firms were more exposed. The reported policy therefore has a distributional effect within the Indian technology workforce rather than affecting every professional equally.
The suspension is also part of a wider policy environment described in the report. A proposed $100,000 payment requirement connected to certain new H-1B petitions has been extended through September 21, 2027, although its implementation is currently blocked by federal court orders while litigation continues. The report also refers to a $70,000 fee for obtaining a job after studying in the US and to a wage-weighted H-1B lottery. These measures are presented as separate developments, but together they raise the cost and uncertainty of the traditional foreign-worker pathway.
For Indian cities, the relevance lies in the way overseas technology employment feeds back into the urban economy. The US-facing IT model supports recruitment, training, professional mobility and household decisions across India’s technology centres. A more restricted route to overseas employment can affect the value placed on specialised training, the business plans of outsourcing companies and the expectations of workers who invest in education with international mobility in mind.
The policy also highlights how dependent immigration outcomes can be on corporate compliance and administrative timing. A professional’s long-term status may turn not only on individual performance or qualifications but on whether an employer is permitted to file, whether a labour certification is accepted and whether subsequent immigration stages are completed before a temporary status limit is reached. That dependence creates a structural vulnerability for workers employed through large staffing and consulting systems.
The evidence supplied in the report confirms the immediate institutional action and outlines the concerns cited by US officials and experts. It does not establish how long the suspensions will remain in force, whether all pending applications will ultimately be rejected, or how federal courts would assess challenges brought by the companies. It also does not quantify the number of Indian professionals directly affected by the decision.
The developments that require monitoring are therefore procedural as much as political: whether the Department of Labour issues further details, whether the suspended companies challenge the action, how pending PERM cases are treated, and whether the courts allow or block related H-1B fee measures. For Indian technology professionals, the central issue is no longer only access to a US job. It is whether the employer-sponsored system still provides a predictable bridge from temporary work to permanent residence.
