Trump Administration Suspends Microsoft, Adobe, and Six Other Employers from PERM Visa Program
U.S. DOL Aggressively Expands Use of "Green Card" Program Restrictions in High-Profile Enforcement Action
The Key Development – The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) suspended eight prominent employers/federal contractors from using the “green card” process to convert temporary visa workers into employees with permanent work authorization.
This is a major – indeed, unprecedented – development signaling a much more aggressive approach by the Trump administration to limit employers’ ability to provide permanent authorization status to workers on temporary work visas.
Employers should work with counsel to ensure they are in legal compliance with temporary and permanent work visa requirements, and also to be fully aware of the changing nature of this administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement strategy and approach.
What DOL Announced
On October 8, 2026, Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that the DOL will immediately stop accepting new PERM applications and cease processing existing applications submitted by Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini.
Secretary Sonderling said “We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies.” He stated Microsoft and Adobe were suspended “due to multiple active federal investigations.”
Vice President Vance focused on Microsoft’s layoffs and sponsorship of foreign workers over the last year, tying the suspension to the Administration’s broader worker-protection message:
“We’re also going to deny them the ability to apply for these permanent residencies until they show that they are going to get serious about putting American workers first.”
The government did not announce an end date to these restrictions or explain the legal or factual basis for each company’s suspension.
A Quickly Growing Enforcement Plan
This is the latest in a series of PERM enforcement actions with increasingly immediate consequences.
- Cloudera — DOJ alleged discrimination against U.S. workers, and DOL separately suspended Cloudera from filing PERM applications before the allegations were resolved. We previously warned that coordinated agency action can disrupt sponsorship programs before a court reaches a final conclusion.
- OpenAI — DOJ focused on whether U.S. workers had the same practical opportunity to find and apply for PERM positions as applicants in ordinary hiring. The $3.2 million settlement showed that process differences affecting only a small number of positions can create significant exposure.
The Microsoft and Adobe announcement is the broadest PERM suspension action to date. Read together with the enforcement actions against Cloudera and OpenAI, it reinforces two practical
lessons —
- PERM recruitment may be evaluated under both immigration and anti-discrimination laws, and
- Alleged compliance problems can trigger immediate and highly disruptive sponsorship consequences, even before a finding of non-compliance.
PERM Suspension Can Create Immediate & Major Business Disruption
Employers appropriately focus on avoiding PERM audits and denials and maintaining defensible recruitment records. But these DOL enforcement actions highlight a separate and potentially more disruptive risk: DOL may suspend access to the PERM program — and halt both pending and future cases — while an investigation remains active.
For employers with significant sponsorship populations, a suspension can disrupt employee retention and workforce planning and can place employees approaching immigration deadlines at risk, even before the government proves any claims of non-compliance or reaches a settlement.
The important takeaway for employers is that DOL will suspend access to the PERM program as an immediate enforcement tool against employers.
What Should Employers Do Now?
- Compare PERM recruitment with ordinary hiring to identify recruitment steps that could make sponsored open positions harder for U.S. workers to find or apply for.
- Analyze how layoffs, reductions in force, and contemporaneous sponsorship activity may appear when viewed together by enforcement agencies.
- Conduct a privileged review of active and recent PERM matters before an audit, investigation, or suspension creates immediate operational consequences.
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If you have questions about this Alert or need guidance regarding PERM recruitment, immigration sponsorship programs, or workplace immigration compliance, please contact the Silberman Law legal professional with whom you work, or simply reply to this Alert.
