THE US on Thursday suspended eight IT firms, including Microsoft, Tata, Infosys and Wipro, from a programme to apply for green cards for foreign workers, contending that the practice has shut out Americans from the job market. The announcement was made by Vice President J D Vance, Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling, and Attorney General Todd Blanche as part of the action under the aegis of the US Anti-Fraud Task Force. “I am hereby suspending from the Permanent Labour Certification Programme some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini,” Sonderling said.

 

He said the Department of Labour is also suspending Microsoft and Adobe from the programme due to multiple active federal investigations.

“There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft,” Vance said. “Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers in 2025 after certifying that it could not find qualified American employees yet the company was approved for more than 6,000 H-1Bs and filed 3,682 PERM applications, including nearly 1,000 applications for the same positions as the laid off American workers,” the Vice President said. Sonderling said the Department of Labour will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labour certification applications involving these companies.

 

“Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost three million foreign workers. They've received over 2,30,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 1,00,000 permanent labour certifications,” Sonderling said. That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers, Sonderling said. Indian professionals account for over 70 per cent of all approved H-1B petitions annually. The Vice President referred to foreign workers hired on H1-B visas as “foreign indentured servants” and the companies using the programme as “visa mills”. Vance also announced an investigation into the J-1 visa programme for research scholars utilised by nine major universities, including Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Caltech. “Something weird is going on at these universities. They’re using these visas way too much. They’re using them to undercut the wages of American grad students and American researchers,” Vance said. The J-1 programme allows foreign nationals to enter the US as exchange visitors for activities, including research, teaching, study and specialised professional work.

 

“This is a fundamental insult to the American worker and to the American way of life. We cannot allow visa programmes that were designed to ensure that American corporations had access to the best and the brightest, to use them to undercut the wages of American workers,” Vance said. “I don’t care how prestigious the university thinks it is. Break the law and screw the American people, and I will personally cuff you in the university square,” Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito, Department of Labour, said. “I don’t care how large your endowment is, how powerful your alumni are, or how many politicians you have on speed dial. As Vice President Vance said, nobody is above the law. That’s why we’re establishing a visa fraud strike team, bringing together investigative expertise from across government,” D’Esposito said.

 

The announcement came hours before Trump was scheduled to award the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, part of an event at which he is granting some of the nation's most prestigious science and technology awards to his tech billionaire allies. Vance said that the programme from which Microsoft is being suspended requires companies to advertise jobs in America before applying to the Department of Labour to show they need to give a foreign worker a green card because of a lack of American workers. “They’ll put an advertisement in a small-town newspaper. They’ll go out there and say that We have advertised for a position with our company, and nobody is responding to it.’ And they will use that lack of response to then go and replace American workers with what is effectively foreign indentured servants,” Vance said. The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday proposed a USD 70,000 fee for international students seeking to work in the United States. The proposed rule would require schools to pay the fee for every student who participates in the Optional Practical Training programme, known as OPT, which allows students to work in jobs related to their major during or after their time in school.