THE GIST
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The Trump Administration locked out major tech companies including Microsoft, Adobe and others from pursuing green cards for their employees. The direct financial hit from this might be small, but India is livid as it directly affects its foreign citizens. The diplomatic fallout from this won’t be small.
WHAT HAPPENED
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday announced Microsoft and seven other IT firms are suspended from PERM, the first step toward an employment green card.
Microsoft is the real target. Vance said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards.
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling extended the freeze to a number of Indian IT companies including Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. Adobe is also covered. The department said it will accept no new applications and process no pending ones for these firms.
PERM is the Labor Department’s labor certification process, and it’s the first step toward most employer-sponsored green cards. Its job is to prove that hiring a foreign worker won’t hurt U.S. workers, and that no American can do the job the foreigner was hired to do.
With the Labor Department not accepting new applications and processing no pending ones, workers mid-process lose months of work, not just future filings.
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New Delhi was offended by the move, but more so with the language Vance used. Vance asked U.S. companies to “stop importing an indentured servant to do a job that an American worker would happily do.” This is a term that has deeper connotations and references to India’s colonial past, where indentured servants referred to workers on plantations and farms overseas.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs reminded Washington that Indian professionals in the United States are highly educated and skilled contributors to its economy and innovation ecosystem.
This affects Indian employees at American firms more directly than Indian IT companies. Indian IT outsourcers have reduced their exposure to PERM certifications. Infosys filed 781 applications in 2023 and none in 2024 or 2025. Wipro filed 204 in 2025.
But Indian employees at Microsoft, Adobe and other companies will have a longer wait than they already do. A Cato Institute analysis found that out of a backlog of 1.8 million employment-based cases, 1.1 million of them are Indian. New Indian applicants in EB-2 and EB-3 face a 134-year wait. This move effectively keeps them out of line.
The risk for companies that aren’t banned is small. It could also give them an upper hand in filing for green cards and use that as a lure for poaching employees.
WHAT’S NEXT
Vance said Microsoft stays blocked until it shows it will put American workers first. So there’s no definitive timeline on that front. While we wait as lawmakers close the loopholes in the program, there’s a bigger question: Will New Delhi use this as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations?
Source: www.yahoo.com
