Microsoft and Adobe lose green card approvals amid fraud probe

The freeze applies to PERM, short for Permanent Labor Certification. It is usually the first step when a US employer sponsors a foreign worker for a green card. The company has to show the Labor Department that it tried to find qualified American workers for the job, could not, and that hiring a foreign worker will not drag down wages or conditions for Americans doing similar work.

Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the department would take no new filings and process no pending ones involving the affected companies. Besides Microsoft and Adobe, the list covers Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Capgemini, HCL Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services. Four of those are Indian firms, and Capgemini is based in France.

The government tied the suspensions to several active federal investigations into fraud and abuse of the visa system. It has not said how long the freeze will last.

Vice President JD Vance made the announcement at a White House news conference and aimed most of his fire at Microsoft. He argued that companies place job ads in places where few Americans will see them, such as a small-town newspaper, then use the lack of replies to justify hiring a foreign worker.

Vance said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year while obtaining 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. He said no US company has used the system more. His message to the company was blunt: “you’ve got to hire great American workers.”

The timing was awkward. The announcement came hours before President Trump was due to give Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Nadella himself first came to the US on an H-1B visa.

Microsoft responded the same day. A spokesperson said most of the company’s US employees are Americans and that about 80% of the roughly 6,000 H-1B applications it filed over its most recent fiscal year covered people who already worked there, either renewing their visas or switching their status. The rest, it said, went to people already living legally in the US, equal to only 1% of its American workforce.

A week later, Microsoft president Brad Smith went further in an interview with Politico. He called Vance’s accusations “completely off base” and said the company pays immigrants and US-born staff on the same scale. He added that Microsoft hired more than 9,000 US-born workers last year and that most of its green card filings were for long-time employees, not new hires.

Smith also pointed to the medal ceremony. Five of the six Americans honored that day had come to the US as immigrants, he said, and together their companies are worth more than 25% of the whole S&P 500. His warning: blocking skilled workers from permanent residency could push the next wave of AI engineers to build careers in other countries.

Adobe did not immediately comment.

The short answer is that nobody is being deported because of this decision. The suspension stops future green card paperwork. It does not cancel anyone’s current H-1B visa, and it does not revoke an I-140 (the immigrant petition that follows an approved PERM) that was already approved.

How much it hurts depends on where you are in the process:

• Early in your H-1B. The visa usually runs three years and can be extended to a maximum of six. If you are in your second, third or fourth year, you can stay until that six-year clock runs out.
• Already holding an approved I-140. You can generally keep extending your H-1B in three-year steps while you wait for your green card priority date, even with the freeze in place.
• Near the six-year limit with no approved I-140. This is the group in real trouble. Going past six years usually requires a PERM filing at least 365 days before the deadline. With your employer unable to file, you may have to leave when your time runs out.

The way out for many will be a job at a company that is not suspended. An H-1B can be transferred to a new employer, which can then start the green card process from scratch. Workers who are laid off still have the standard 60-day grace period to find a new sponsor. Homeland Security has proposed removing that grace period, but for now it is only a proposal.

The same announcement named nine universities that Vance said deserve investigation over J-1 visas, which let international visitors come to the US for short-term work and study exchanges. He said they use the program far more than their peers. The schools are MIT, Caltech, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Brown, Arizona State, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Davis.

A day earlier, the Department of Homeland Security proposed a $70,000 fee that schools would pay for every international student in Optional Practical Training, or OPT. That program lets students work in jobs tied to their major during or after their studies. Taken together, the moves put pressure on almost every route a foreign graduate uses to start a US tech career.

Vance’s description of H-1B workers as “foreign indentured servants” drew sharp criticism. India’s Ministry of External Affairs called the remarks unwarranted and deeply offensive. Indian nationals make up nearly three-quarters of approved H-1B visas.

At a CBS News town hall that aired on October 17, a voter who had become a US citizen accused him of scapegoating immigrants. Vance replied that if his rhetoric had been imperfect, “that’s on me.” He said his target was employers, who hold too much power over workers whose right to stay depends on keeping their job. He did not back away from the suspensions themselves.