US Suspends Microsoft, Adobe and Five Outsourcers From Green Card Program

By Olivia Hart

The Trump administration is suspending Microsoft, Adobe and six other technology employers from a program that helps skilled foreign workers obtain permanent residency in the United States, accusing the companies of fraud. The decision blocks a core immigration pipeline for the industry's largest users of skilled-worker visas.

Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the government would not accept any new or pending permanent labor certification applications involving the affected companies. Alongside Microsoft and Adobe, the suspensions cover Capgemini, Cognizant, HCL, Infosys, Tata and Wipro — a list that pairs two of the world's largest software makers with five of India's biggest IT outsourcing firms.

"Our message to Microsoft is: You're a great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers," U.S. Vice President JD Vance said at a news conference on Thursday, according to Reuters.

The accusation is fraud. What the government has not yet specified, at least publicly, is which applications or which companies allegedly committed it — a gap that will shape how the suspensions hold up under challenge.

How big is the footprint?

The suspensions touch the H-1B skilled-worker system at its heaviest users. Tech companies are among the largest participants in the program, and nearly three-quarters of approved visas go to workers from India, according to The Associated Press.

Microsoft has now put its own numbers on the record. In a statement to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson said that of the roughly 6,000 H-1B applications Microsoft filed in the last fiscal year, 80% were to extend or change the status of existing employees — not to hire new people.

"We believe in the strength and talent of the American workforce," the spokesperson said. "That is why the vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans."

The company added that the remaining filings, for new hires, involved individuals already legally in the United States. Those filings equal about 1% of Microsoft's U.S. workforce, the spokesperson said — roughly 60 petitions per 6,000 filed, by the company's own arithmetic. "They are not new arrivals to our country."

Microsoft also said it files H-1B petitions only for those meeting the "rigorous standards" of the visa category, and that it pays H-1B employees the same as "other employees doing comparable work." The claims are precise; whether federal investigators accept them is a separate question.

Adobe did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its silence leaves one of the two named U.S. software firms without a public defense.

What does the ruling change?

In practice, the suspension halts green card sponsorship through the permanent labor certification process — the PERM step employers must clear before sponsoring a foreign worker for a green card — for the eight companies named. No new applications will be accepted, and pending ones will not move forward, per Sonderling's statement.

For affected workers already inside Microsoft or the outsourcers, that means a stalled path to permanent residency. For the companies, it means a hiring and retention channel that has run for years now sits in bureaucratic limbo — without, so far, a published evidentiary record behind the fraud accusation.

The administration's framing is blunt: American workers first. The countervailing facts from Microsoft — 80% renewals, 1% of the U.S. workforce in new hires — argue the program, at least at that company, functions largely as a retention tool rather than a floodgate.

Universities are next on the list

Vance said the administration will also investigate nine universities, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, over allegations they are abusing a program that allows international students to study in the U.S. The alleged mechanism, according to Vance, is using that program to undermine wages for American workers.

The university probe extends the same wage-suppression argument from employers to academia. No timeline, no named programs beyond the universities themselves, and no specific findings were disclosed at the news conference.

The bottom line: eight major technology employers just lost access to the green card sponsorship pipeline, and the administration is signaling it will press the same argument into higher education — with the evidence behind both moves still largely undisclosed.