Microsoft’s PERM Suspension Blocks a Green-Card Step, Not H-1B Work

At an October 8, 2026, news conference in Washington, Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the suspension of Microsoft, Adobe and six IT services firms from the Permanent Labor Certification program, known as PERM. The Labor Department will stop accepting new applications and processing pending applications involving those employers. That interrupts an employer-sponsored route toward permanent residence for affected workers.

The action does not suspend the H-1B program or revoke existing H-1B visas. Someone already working for a named employer in valid H-1B status does not lose that authorization because a PERM application has stopped moving. The immediate change concerns labor certification for a proposed permanent job, including cases the employer has already filed.

Which employers are affected

The six firms named alongside Microsoft and Adobe are Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. The restriction applies to labor-certification applications involving these employers; it is not a nationwide pause in PERM processing. For a worker at one of the named companies, however, the distinction offers little relief if that company was preparing to file a PERM case or has one awaiting a decision.

The administration tied the suspensions to investigations and allegations of abuse in foreign-worker programs. Those are allegations, not findings that workers sponsored by the companies acted improperly. The decision concerns what the employers can submit to, and have processed by, the Labor Department while the restriction remains in place.

Microsoft challenged the implication that its H-1B filings chiefly brought new workers into the country. In a statement reported by The Associated Press, Microsoft said about 80% of approximately 6,000 H-1B applications it submitted in its last fiscal year were “to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees.” The company added, “These were not to hire new people.” Its figures describe H-1B filings, a different process from the PERM applications now affected.

Where the path to permanent residence stops

The Labor Department’s PERM guidance explains that, in most cases, an employer needs a certified labor application before it can file an immigrant petition with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Before applying, the employer must obtain a prevailing-wage determination and complete the required recruitment steps. Certification addresses whether qualified U.S. workers are available for the job and whether hiring the foreign worker would adversely affect comparable workers’ wages or working conditions.

For an employee working in H-1B status while an employer pursues a PERM-based green-card case, the stages have different purposes:

1. Temporary employment: H-1B status permits qualifying work under its own terms and validity period. A PERM filing is not required simply to continue working in otherwise valid H-1B status.
2. Labor certification: The employer seeks approval for a permanent job after meeting the applicable wage and recruitment requirements. This is the stage at which new filings and pending applications involving the named employers are stopped.
3. Immigrant petition and residence: Certification ordinarily lets the employer proceed to an immigrant petition. Any later decision on permanent residence follows a separate immigration process; PERM certification itself is not a green card.

The sequence explains how a worker can have valid H-1B status and a stalled green-card case at the same time. Present work authorization and the proposed path to permanent residence depend on different applications. The suspension changes the second of those tracks at the labor-certification stage, even though it does not immediately change the terms of an existing H-1B approval.

Pending cases and future sponsorship

An employer that has not yet filed a PERM application cannot start a new one under the announced restriction. A filed application that remains with the Labor Department will not be processed while the suspension applies. In either situation, a worker counting on that employer’s labor certification cannot assume the green-card case will advance on its previous timetable. A delay may matter well before a person’s current permission to work expires, even when there is no immediate change to the job.

The announcement addresses new and pending labor-certification applications. It did not give a fixed end date or explain whether frozen cases will resume from their existing position, require further employer action, or be treated differently according to their stage when processing restarts. It also did not set out a case-by-case outcome for workers whose employers had obtained certification before the announcement.

For affected employees, the next consequential development is how the Labor Department implements the suspension for individual filings and what it requires before processing can resume. Until those details are issued, a pending PERM application at a named employer remains an interrupted step toward permanent residence, while existing H-1B work authorization continues under its own terms.