The Department of Labor will stop processing green card labor certifications for eight large employers, the biggest escalation yet in the administration’s crackdown on the PERM program. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the action at a White House press conference on Thursday, October 8, 2026, alongside Vice President JD Vance and Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito. The companies are Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini. “We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies,” Sonderling said, according to TIME.
This goes further than last month’s action. On September 8, DOL suspended new PERM filings by Cognizant and Cloudera. This time pending cases are frozen too, so a worker whose PERM was already filed and waiting for a decision is stuck as well. Sonderling cited ongoing federal investigations. He said the eight companies had sought to hire almost 3 million foreign workers and received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and over 100,000 labor certifications since 2009. Vance accused them of using the system to “replace American workers.” He singled out Microsoft, saying it laid off 6,000 U.S. workers last year while obtaining about 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. Microsoft replied that 80% of its H-1B filings last fiscal year were extensions or status changes for existing employees. Tata told Reuters it had filed only single-digit numbers of PERM applications in the past two years. No charges have been announced, and DOL had not posted a written notice or press release when this article was published.
Legal basis and duration. Wolfsdorf Rosenthal points to 20 C.F.R. § 656.31(b) as the likely authority. That provision lets DOL suspend PERM processing while it investigates possible fraud or willful misrepresentation. An initial suspension can last up to 180 days and can be extended while an investigation or court case is unresolved. Vance said the suspensions would last “as long as it needs to.” The firm advises employees not to assume processing restarts automatically after six months.
What it means for employees. Your case’s stage determines your exposure:
- PERM not yet filed: you cannot establish a priority date through these employers while the suspension lasts. For EB-2 and EB-3 India, every month of delay in getting a priority date adds to the wait.
- PERM pending: your case is frozen with no stated end date.
- PERM already certified or I-140 approved: the announcement does not cancel these, and reporting indicates existing visa holders are not directly affected. Watch for any later agency action on approved certifications.
H-1B status itself is not suspended, and the PERM program stays open to every other employer. Employees who need a fresh PERM to extend H-1B status past six years under AC21 should ask counsel now about their timeline.
A separate J-1 probe. In the same announcement, the Labor Inspector General said subpoenas had gone to nine universities in what he called a “historic investigation into J-1 visa fraud”: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, UC Davis, Caltech, Arizona State and MIT. Several of them confirmed receiving the subpoenas. J-1 eligibility rules have not changed. The two actions came one day after DHS proposed a $70,000 fee on Optional Practical Training.
For self-petitioners, these suspensions show why routes that do not need PERM appeal to many foreign professionals. The EB-2 National Interest Waiver and EB-1A let applicants file the I-140 themselves with no labor certification, so an employer’s PERM status does not hold them up.
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