Does IBM sponsor H1B? Not for most consulting jobs after year-end

Yes, but far fewer. The change covers most roles inside IBM Consulting, not the whole company. IBM’s statement talks about “the majority of such roles” in that one unit, so it is not a blanket end to immigration sponsorship across IBM.

What IBM hasn’t done is publish a list. It hasn’t said which consulting jobs keep sponsorship, and it hasn’t set out a visa policy for the rest of the company.

Here’s the short version of where things stand:

• IBM Consulting: visa and green card sponsorship ends for most roles.
• Current sponsored consultants in affected roles: move to an IBM job abroad, or leave at year-end.
• The rest of IBM: not part of the announced change, but no detailed policy has been made public.

The people with the most at stake are consultants already in the US on an IBM-backed visa, and those partway through the green card process. For them, the document gives the same two-way choice: relocate within IBM outside the US, or exit at the end of the year.

That leaves big open questions. IBM hasn’t publicly said what happens to green card cases already filed, or whether workers on existing H-1Bs can stay until their current visa runs out. Reporters asked IBM exactly that, and the company had not given a public answer when the news broke.

Timing matters because of how the system works. An H-1B lasts three years at first and can be extended for three more. To keep someone beyond that, an employer usually starts a green card case, and the first step is PERM, a labor certification where the company must show it couldn’t find a US worker for the job. If IBM stops filing those steps, a worker’s path to permanent residence through IBM stops with it.

IBM’s explanation is low-key. A spokesperson said IBM Consulting has used US high-skilled visa programs to fill skill gaps, that this use has been shrinking for several years, and that with changes in available skills and client demand, the company chose to end sponsorship for most of those roles.

The numbers back up the “shrinking” part. US Citizenship and Immigration Services data shows IBM had 1,611 H-1B approvals in the fiscal year that ended September 30, down from 2,045 the year before and nearly 3,000 in fiscal 2024. Those totals cover all of IBM, not only consulting, and some are extensions or amendments for existing staff rather than new hires.

Cost may be the other part of the story, one analysis suggests. Consulting firms earn money by billing people’s time to clients, so anything that makes a worker more expensive to employ hits profit directly. The same analysis reads IBM’s offer to keep people on from abroad as a sign that some of these jobs could shift overseas instead of vanishing.

IBM’s move lands after a rough year for companies that hire foreign tech workers. The main pressure points so far:

• The fee fight: President Trump introduced a $100,000 fee on some new H-1B petitions in September 2025. A federal judge struck it down in June as an unlawful tax, and the administration has since proposed a replacement charge of $103,265 through formal rulemaking.
• The lottery: changes to the annual H-1B draw now favor higher-paid applicants.
• PERM suspensions: in October, the Labor Department suspended Microsoft, Adobe and several outsourcing giants, among them Infosys, Cognizant and Tata Consultancy Services, from PERM while it looks into fraud claims.
• Settlements: the Justice Department has reached deals with OpenAI and Instacart over job ads that appeared to favor foreign candidates.

Vice President JD Vance has been the public face of the PERM push. Speaking on October 8, he said the administration wants tech firms to keep growing but to “employ American workers.” Microsoft president Brad Smith has warned the restrictions could damage the US tech industry for more than a generation.

IBM itself hasn’t been accused of anything, and the administration hasn’t singled it out. It’s also a mid-sized H-1B user next to its rivals: through three quarters of fiscal 2026, Amazon had filed upward of 13,715 visa applications, roughly 11 times as many as IBM, while Apple, Meta and Microsoft each filed roughly four times as many.

For job seekers, IBM’s move is a signal that sponsorship can’t be taken for granted, even at a company that has used the H-1B program since Congress created it in 1990. Consulting is the most exposed part of the industry, because those firms have long been among the program’s heaviest users.

Here is what the reported facts add up to, point by point:

• Which unit: IBM Consulting, by far the company’s largest business. It has more than 150,000 consultants, while IBM’s 2025 annual report counted 264,300 people across IBM and the subsidiaries it fully owns.
• Which roles: most of the consulting roles that used visas, not every one. IBM’s own wording is “the majority of such roles.”
• Which programs: both the H-1B work visa and green card sponsorship, which starts with the PERM labor certification.
• When: affected staff face a year-end choice between an IBM job outside the US and leaving the company.
• Who else: nobody, so far. The change is limited to consulting and isn’t a company-wide end to sponsorship, though IBM hasn’t published a visa policy for its other units either.

For people outside IBM, the clearest takeaway is the trend line. IBM’s sponsorship had already been shrinking for years before this decision, and its H-1B approvals dropped in each of the last two fiscal years.