Analysis
The Trump administration said Thursday it will stop processing new and pending green card applications for skilled workers at Microsoft, Adobe and six IT outsourcing firms, citing fraud, according to TechCrunch. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the freeze on permanent labor certification filings -- the process companies use to sponsor foreign employees for permanent residency.
Who's affected
- Microsoft — filed about 6,000 H-1B applications last fiscal year, 80% to extend or change status for existing employees, with new hires equal to roughly 1% of its U.S. workforce.
- Adobe — did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment.
- Capgemini, Cognizant, HCL, Infosys, Tata and Wipro — IT services and outsourcing firms that rely heavily on H-1B and green card pipelines to staff U.S. client engagements.
“- Capgemini, Cognizant, HCL, Infosys, Tata and Wipro — IT services and outsourcing firms that rely heavily on H-1B and green card pipelines to staff U.S.”
Vice President JD Vance used the announcement to put Microsoft on notice directly: "You're a great American company, but you must hire American workers." Microsoft responded that most of its U.S. employees are Americans and that it pays H-1B staff the same as comparable workers, and said it would give the administration more information.
The move extends a broader push on skilled-worker visas: Vance also said the administration will investigate nine universities, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, over claims they let the international student-visa program undercut American workers' wages. Nearly three-quarters of approved H-1B visas go to workers from India, and the six outsourcing firms named here are among the largest users of that pipeline into the U.S. tech sector.
What the announcement doesn't specify is scope or duration -- there's no stated date for when, or whether, filings resume, no worker count tied to the freeze, and no detail on what the administration considers fraud versus ordinary visa-program use. Pulse has covered Microsoft's AI infrastructure and hiring moves closely this year; this is the first labor-policy story to hit the company directly rather than through a product or funding lens.
For venture-backed startups, the direct exposure is narrower -- PERM freezes hit large sponsors with the filing volume to draw scrutiny, not early-stage companies sponsoring a handful of engineers. The indirect exposure is bigger: any startup leaning on outsourcing partners like Infosys, Tata or Cognizant for contract engineering now has a supplier-side green card pipeline that just got frozen, with no published timeline for when it reopens.