The U.S. Department of Labor has suspended the ability of Cognizant and Cloudera to file new PERM applications, the permanent labor certification that is the mandatory first step in most employment-based green card cases. Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito announced the action on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, describing it as part of an investigation into alleged fraud in the H-1B and PERM programs that followed whistleblower complaints.
D’Esposito’s announcement was blunt — “Threats to American workers will NOT be tolerated,” he wrote, adding that “handcuffs await.” The investigation is being run in coordination with the White House Fraud Task Force and other Labor Department officials. Notably, the announcement did not disclose the specific allegations against either company, how many applications are affected, or how long the suspension will remain in place.
The scale is significant. Cognizant secured approval for 3,510 H-1B petitions in fiscal year 2026 through June 30, making it one of the larger corporate users of the program. A suspension of new PERM filings does not, by itself, touch work that is already done: it does not cancel previously approved labor certifications, existing employment-based green cards, or already-approved H-1B petitions.
For employees, the impact depends entirely on where they sit in the queue. Workers whose PERM has already been certified, or who have an approved I-140, are not automatically affected by a freeze on new filings. Workers who were waiting for their employer to start the process face open-ended uncertainty, because neither the duration nor the scope of the suspension has been stated. Priority dates cannot be established while filings are frozen, which in the heavily backlogged EB-2 and EB-3 India categories can translate a months-long administrative pause into years of downstream delay.
The action fits a broader pattern of enforcement escalation across the employment-based system, and employees of large IT services firms should ask their employer directly where their individual case stands rather than assuming a company-wide freeze applies to their stage.
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Source: Reddit r/greencard