The Trump administration on Thursday suspended IT giants TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant and Capgemini from a programme that allowed these companies to apply for green cards for H-1B visa workers.
US Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling said, “I am hereby suspending from the Permanent Labour Certification Programme some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini.”
Pointing out that the Department of Labour is also suspending Microsoft and Adobe from the programme, he said, “We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labour certification applications involving these companies.”
“Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost three million foreign workers. They’ve received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labour certifications,” Sonderling said. “That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers.”
No US firm ‘abused’ the green card system more than Microsoft
Vice-President J.D. Vance, who accompanied Sonderling, slammed Microsoft for not putting “Americans first”.
“Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” Vance said, alleging that no US firm had “abused” the green card system more than Microsoft.
Vance claimed that Microsoft laid off 6,000 Americans in 2025, while securing 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. “If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” Vance said.
