US Targets Immigrant Tech Workers, Halts Green-Card Path for Major Corporations
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The U.S. administration has suspended PERM green-card sponsorship for tech giants like Microsoft and Adobe, disproportionately harming immigrant workers and catering to nationalist rhetoric.
On Thursday, the United States government announced a sweeping exclusion of major technology companies from the Permanent Labour Certification (PERM) program—a critical route for skilled foreign workers to gain permanent residency. This move, championed by Vice President JD Vance, is framed as a crackdown on supposed 'abuse' of the system, but in reality, it scapegoats immigrant labor and panders to xenophobic fears about American jobs.
'The programme has become rife with fraud,' Vance declared at a White House news conference, echoing long-standing anti-immigrant talking points. He further claimed that some workers are 'mistreated by their employers' and used to undercut American wages, ignoring the real issue: exploitative corporate practices and weak labor protections for all workers, regardless of nationality.
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling reinforced this narrative, vowing to 'shut down the pipeline of systemic fraud'—a phrase that conveniently shifts blame onto foreign workers and away from the corporations that profit from their labor. Sonderling suggested that fraud extends beyond hiring to the citizenship process, stoking further suspicion of immigrants.
The suspension specifically targets Microsoft, Adobe, and several Indian-based IT firms such as Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini. While these companies are now barred from new or pending PERM applications, tech giants like Meta, Amazon, and Google—who also exploit the H-1B system—are conspicuously absent from the list, raising questions about selective enforcement and corporate favoritism.
Critics of the H-1B and PERM programs often argue that they are used to lower labor costs, but this ignores the broader context of corporate greed and the lack of strong labor rights. Vance cited Microsoft’s 2023 layoff of 6,000 U.S. employees alongside the issuance of 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards, painting a misleading picture of foreign workers as the cause of job losses, rather than holding corporations accountable for prioritizing profit over people. Sonderling noted that the suspended firms had received more than 230,000 H-1B visas and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications since 2009, further fueling anti-immigrant sentiment.
Microsoft responded that most recent H-1B filings were for existing employees extending or changing status, and that all applicants meet the visa category’s standards and receive comparable pay—a fact that undermines the administration’s narrative.
This policy change threatens the livelihoods of thousands of foreign workers, many of whom are Indian nationals already facing a discriminatory backlog in the PERM process. India’s Ministry of External Affairs condemned the suspension as 'unwarranted' and 'deeply offensive,' rightly pointing out that talent mobility benefits both economies. The vice president’s remarks, invoking colonial labor practices, reveal the administration’s willingness to exploit historical trauma for political gain.