Labor Department halts green-card filings for Microsoft, Adobe and six IT firms: what it covers and what it doesn't

The Labor Department said Thursday it will stop accepting or processing applications under its Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program for Microsoft, Adobe and a list of outsourcing firms, including Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced it alongside Vice President JD Vance, according to CNBC and Fox Business. Bloomberg also reported it.

What the suspension is, and isn't

PERM is the labor-certification step an employer must complete before it can sponsor a worker for permanent residency, a green card. Both reports describe the action as a suspension from that program. Neither says it touches existing H-1B visas, and we found no statement that workers already employed lose status. The reports also say pending applications from the named companies will not be processed. The Labor Department said Adobe and Microsoft were suspended "due to multiple active federal investigations."

The administration's numbers, as quoted by Sonderling: the named companies have together requested almost 3 million foreign workers since 2009 and received over 230,000 H-1B approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications. Those are the department's figures and we have not verified them against filing data.

Microsoft's side

Vance said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year while receiving 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. Microsoft replied that of about 6,000 H-1B applications in the last fiscal year, 80% were to extend or change the status of existing employees. On those figures, roughly 1,200 filings, about one in five, were for workers new to the company, and Microsoft says those were for people already legally in the U.S., equal to about 1% of its U.S. workforce. Levels.fyi data cited by CNBC puts Microsoft fourth in 2026 H-1B petitions at 21,706, behind Amazon at 35,426, Cognizant and EY. The two sets of numbers do not line up, and CNBC does not explain why; they may count different things (petitions versus applications, approvals versus filings).

The market reaction is not what the headline suggests

Quotes from Nasdaq.com, delayed up to 15 minutes.

Microsoft's 1.4% decline matches the Nasdaq 100's drop on a day when AI-related stocks sold off on OpenAI's revenue revision, which we cover separately. Nothing in the price action isolates the visa news. Cognizant is one of the named firms and is up more than 5%, and Accenture, which is not on the reported list, is up more than 6%. We did not find a report explaining those gains, so we won't offer one. The point is narrower: on the day, the market did not treat this as a clear negative for the named companies.

Who else should pay attention

Any employer that sponsors green cards, including the many mid-size and small firms that do so for a handful of engineers, nurses or cooks, should note that the action is aimed at named companies under investigation. Nothing in the reports extends it to employers who are not named. The political backdrop matters, though: CNBC ties the move to the administration's focus on immigration and foreign hiring ahead of November's midterm elections, and Fox Business shows a separate proposed $100,000 H-1B filing fee still in play. Owners with sponsored staff should check the status of pending filings with their immigration counsel rather than wait for the rules to come to them.

What to watch

• Whether the department adds companies to the suspended list, and what criteria it publishes.
• Any legal challenge from the named companies, or Adobe's response; CNBC said it had asked Adobe for comment.
• Whether the $100,000 H-1B fee proposal moves forward.

Sources: CNBC; Fox Business; Bloomberg; Nasdaq.com quotes. This is market information, not investment advice, and not legal advice.