US halts green cards for Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant

The US Labor Department suspended Microsoft, Adobe and six IT outsourcing firms — Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini — from the PERM program, the first step in employer-sponsored green cards. New applications will not be accepted and pending ones will not be processed. Vice President JD Vance accused Microsoft of laying off 6,000 Americans last year while obtaining 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. Microsoft countered that 80% of its roughly 6,000 H-1B filings were extensions or status changes for existing employees, and that new hires were already legally resident in the US. The move does not block H-1B filings, but it removes the main permanent-residency pathway for sponsored workers. Key signal: The US Labor Department suspended Microsoft, Adobe and six IT outsourcing firms — Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini — from the PERM permanent-labour-certification program, halting new filings and pending green-card applications. For hiring leaders, this matters because for Indian IT services firms, PERM suspension is a structural problem, not a headline. Bench engineers on H-1B who were banking on green cards now face an indefinite wait, which raises attrition risk and weakens the US onsite pitch used to retain senior talent. GCCs and product companies that sponsor visas will see the same effect. Expect three consequences: more H-1B talent opting to return to India, faster growth of India-based delivery for roles that previously required onsite presence, and a harder sell for US relocation offers. Compensation and retention strategy for visa-dependent senior engineers needs revisiting now. Teksands view: This is a hiring story disguised as an immigration story. The six Indian IT firms named are the same firms that move thousands of engineers to US client sites every year. With PERM frozen, the green-card carrot is gone, and senior H-1B talent has less reason to stay in the US. Expect a measurable reverse flow into Indian tech hubs over the next two to four quarters. Smart TA teams should be building pipelines for exactly this cohort now — agentic AI, cloud and enterprise architecture skills, US client exposure, and suddenly open to India-based roles.