The Labor Department said it will not accept new or pending permanent labor certification applications involving Microsoft, Adobe and six IT firms, accusing them of abusing worker programs.
The US Labor Department said on Thursday it will not accept new permanent labor certification applications, or process pending ones, involving Microsoft, Adobe and six information-technology firms, Reuters reported. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling named Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini alongside the two software companies.
Vice President JD Vance said no US company had abused the system more than Microsoft. He said the company had laid off American workers while filing thousands of H-1B and green-card applications. The BBC reported Vance's figure as about 6,000 layoffs and 6,800 H-1B applications in the same period. Reuters said Microsoft is the largest filer of PERM applications in Labor Department data.
Microsoft disputed the framing. A spokeswoman told the BBC that the vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans. TechCrunch reported a company statement that Microsoft files H-1B petitions only for people who meet the category's standards, and that about 80 percent of roughly 6,000 H-1B applications in the last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of existing employees.
Sonderling said the named firms had since 2009 sought almost three million foreign workers and had received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and more than 100,000 permanent labor certifications, Reuters reported. The same announcement opened a fraud inquiry into J-1 student visas at nine universities, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, the Financial Times reported.
The step is a suspension of PERM processing for the named employers, not a cancellation of visas already issued. Microsoft's share price fell more than 1 percent after the announcement, the Financial Times reported.
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- JD Vance said no US company had abused the system more than Microsoft.
- Microsoft said about 80 percent of its recent H-1B filings were for existing employees.
- Keith Sonderling said the department will not process new or pending permanent labor certifications for the named companies.