US Department of Labor Suspends PERM Participation of Eight Multinational IT Companies; Indian Outsourcing Giants Hit Hardest

According to the international edition of The Hindu, on October 8 the US Department of Labor announced the suspension of eight multinational IT companies—Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Capgemini, Microsoft, and Adobe—from participation in the Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM); effective immediately, the Department of Labor will no longer accept or process any new or pending permanent residence certification applications involving the aforementioned companies. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling read the suspension order at a press conference; Vice President J.D. Vance attended in his capacity as head of the anti-fraud working group, appearing alongside Sonderling.

Sonderling said while reading the suspension order: "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." Quoting him, The Hindu said: "We 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 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labour certifications."

"That's hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers," Sonderling added.

Among the eight companies, five are IT outsourcing giants headquartered in India—Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, and HCL—which have long dominated system operations and maintenance and basic coding work for US enterprises; the others are France's Capgemini and US-based Microsoft and Adobe. Data disclosed by the Department of Labor indicate that since 2009, these eight companies alone have applied for nearly three million foreign workers, with over 230,000 receiving H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 obtaining permanent residence through PERM.

Vance's political stance and the White House's "American Workers First" narrative framework have elevated a measure originally belonging to the technical labor administrative process into a systemic state intervention targeting the multinational IT industry chain. The Department of Labor publicly pointed its spear at India's outsourcing industry—an industry that over the past decades has shouldered technical positions that US client companies have struggled to fill domestically with suitable candidates. The "American workers deprived of jobs" rhetoric has lumped together US employers long dependent on foreign engineers, outsourcing employees who handle grassroots system construction and maintenance work, and hundreds of thousands of skilled immigrant families already settled in the US, all squeezed into a single nativist victim image.

Those truly affected by the suspension order are foreign technical personnel and their families who have lived in the US for many years, whose children attend local schools, and whose careers are deeply bound to the H-1B and PERM pathway. Their permanent residence queueing may grind to a halt immediately, even as they precisely filled roles that the US domestic labor market has long suffered shortages in.

The subsequent impact of the suspension measure on the permanent residence applications of H-1B holders already in the queue and their families remains unclear; the aforementioned companies are expected to mount legal challenges against this administrative decision, and the ultimate effect is uncertain. If outsourcing operations are disrupted, whether the related companies will transfer positions to the Indian mainland or other third countries will also affect the long-term supply-demand structure of the US technical labor market.