Are Microsoft and Wipro Green Cards Frozen? What Is PERM? Are H-1B Visas Still Valid?

A sponsorship interruption is not a blanket visa cancellation

An employer’s permanent-residency application and a worker’s permission to remain in the United States are not the same thing. That distinction is the central finding of The Kopje Journal & Review’s assessment of the reported October 2026 suspension of eight employers from permanent labor certification, commonly called PERM.

The retained audit reported that the United States Department of Labor stopped accepting new applications and processing pending cases involving Microsoft, Adobe, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Cognizant and Capgemini on October 8. It did not describe an automatic cancellation of existing work visas or already granted green cards. The announcement and named employers were reported contemporaneously by Associated Press.

For an affected worker, the consequential question was therefore not simply whether a familiar company appeared on the list. It was which American legal entity sponsored the case, what had actually been filed and what independent immigration conditions applied to that person.

Permanent labor certification tests a particular job

PERM concerns an employer’s proposed permanent position in the United States. In the process described by the audit, the employer defines the job and location, obtains a prevailing-wage determination and recruits under federal rules. It must establish whether able, willing, qualified and available American workers can fill the position.

Recruitment records and the reasons for rejecting applicants matter. A general assertion that suitable workers cannot be found is not a substitute for the required process. Labor certification is intended to test a defined employment opportunity, not approve a company’s entire international staffing model. The federal recruitment rules set out these employer obligations.

That specificity also limits what can be inferred from a multinational’s name. A global brand does not, by itself, identify every sponsoring affiliate or establish that every employee has the same kind of application.

The sequence determines what a worker has—and has not—secured

Recruitment begun is not a PERM application filed. Filing, pending review, certification, an immigrant-worker petition and a final residence decision are separate stages. The audit explains that filing generally establishes an immigration priority date; preparation alone does not.

It describes a normal 180-day period for submitting an approved labor certification with Form I-140 to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. An approved petition is still not a green card. Visa-number availability and the final residence process remain material. The filing-date and certification-expiry provisions are set out in 20 CFR 656.30.

Collapsing these stages into a single promise of sponsorship obscures risk. Someone awaiting a first filing is differently situated from someone with a certified application or approved petition. Neither a recruitment exercise nor a company’s intention to sponsor should be represented as an immigration status already obtained.

Eight international businesses do not form one employment case

The companies named in the retained audit span several corporate backgrounds. Microsoft and Adobe are American software businesses; Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and HCL Technologies are Indian IT businesses. Cognizant is United States-headquartered, while Capgemini is French. Each operates internationally.

The relevant distinction for an employee is not simply the company’s home country. The sponsoring American legal entity, job, work location and application stage need to be identified. A professional employed abroad may be considering a future transfer, while another employee may already work lawfully in the United States.

Those circumstances cannot be treated as interchangeable. Nor does an employer-level allegation establish misconduct by every worker whose plans depend on that employer.

Layoff totals are not proof about individual recruitment decisions

The administration’s stated concern, as reported in the audit, was that companies were laying off Americans while sponsoring foreign workers. Vice President J. D. Vance compared approximately 6,000 Microsoft layoffs in the preceding year with roughly 6,300 H-1B approvals and almost 3,000 green cards, according to Associated Press’s October 8 report.

Those figures measure different events. The comparison did not establish that the same jobs, people or periods were involved. The audit also records larger historical totals attributed to Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, while distinguishing requests from unique people and certifications from issued green cards.

Such totals can frame a policy argument, but they cannot establish the circumstances of each recruitment decision. American workers’ entitlement to lawful recruitment and fair wages does not remove the need to test the allegations against relevant records.

Existing recruitment rules make the details decisive

The audit describes PERM rules addressing layoffs by the applicant employer in the intended employment area within six months before filing the application. Where the same or a related occupation is involved, potentially qualified laid-off American workers must be notified and considered, with the outcome documented. Section 656.17(k) specifies the relevant employment area, occupation and filing-related window.

The relevant questions therefore concern duties, location, timing, employer identity and recruitment records. A multinational’s layoff in another place is not automatically proof of a violation in the position under review.

This distinction neither dismisses the government’s allegations nor resolves them in the companies’ favour. It identifies the evidence needed to move from a broad accusation to a defensible finding. The reported suspension and proof of wrongdoing are different propositions.

Company responses and case counts need their denominators

Microsoft said on October 8 that 80 percent of about 6,000 H-1B filings in its previous fiscal year concerned existing employees. It said new-hire filings involved people already legally in the United States and equalled approximately one percent of its American workforce. These were corporate assertions, not adjudicated findings, recorded in Microsoft’s October 8 statement.

The audit attributed to Business Insider’s October 8 analysis a count of 1,504 Microsoft PERM certifications in the fiscal year’s first three quarters, compared with 168 for Adobe. It also cited a compilation recording 523 fiscal-2025 case outcomes under Wipro Limited. Those outcomes were not necessarily applications filed in that year or cases suspended in October.

Tata Consultancy Services’ October 9 statement described its applications over the preceding two years as single-digit and expected no material workforce or customer impact. A dated October 10 third-party analysis separately reported 513 fiscal-2025 TCS case decisions and two for fiscal 2026, alongside the Wipro figure of 523. These are decision-year compilations, not an independent count of applications filed in those years. The audit did not reconcile the different measures. A company’s assessment of limited business exposure cannot settle the consequences for an individual employee.

The wider immigration debate is context, not a single legal mechanism

The source places the PERM action within a broader enforcement and skilled-migration debate. It attributes to Reuters’s September 14 report, preserved in a syndicated copy, reporting preliminary government data, nearly 51,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests during August and average deportations of about 1,200 a day, while stressing that arrests and deportations are different measures and do not describe lawful PERM applicants.

It also discusses H-1B selection and payment disputes. Those matters are distinct from labor certification and should not be used to imply that all routes to American employment were closed by one announcement.

The government’s protection-of-workers argument and industry concerns about uncertainty or lost skills belong in the policy discussion. Neither substitutes for determining which measure governs a particular application. This article retains the original October reporting perspective rather than presenting those separate policy and court developments as newly verified current law.

Four imagined workers reveal different points of exposure

The audit uses hypothetical workers, not reported individual case files. A Wipro professional in Punjab whose covered American sponsor has not yet filed PERM has no filing priority date for that case. An interruption to planned sponsorship is not the cancellation of their employment in India.

A Cognizant professional in Durban considering an intracompany transfer faces a different set of corporate, role and work-history requirements. Working for an international company does not itself create a transfer entitlement. A USCIS explanation of L-1 requirements distinguishes the qualifying organization, role and overseas-employment period. A Brazilian-born Microsoft engineer in Seattle may have a valid temporary work status whose conditions must be considered separately from permanent sponsorship.

A job seeker in Harare needs an actual sponsoring employer and a specific job, not merely an application sent to a multinational. These examples explain process distinctions; they do not establish anyone’s eligibility or predict a decision.

Timing and birthplace can alter the practical consequences

The source describes the ordinary H-1B six-year limit and qualifying exceptions involving earlier labor-certification or immigrant-petition filings and, in some cases, approved petitions where visa numbers are unavailable. Further eligibility conditions and filings remain necessary; beginning PERM preparation is not protection against an expiring status. The qualified exceptions appear in 8 CFR 214.2(h)(13)(iii)(D)–(E).

For its October 2026 snapshot, the audit reports the dates shown in the State Department’s October Visa Bulletin: an employment-based second-preference final-action cutoff of November 1, 2013 for India, compared with January 1, 2025 for most people born in Brazil, South Africa or Zimbabwe. These are category-specific visa-number cutoffs in the cited bulletin, not forecasts of how long any person will wait.

The audit notes that chargeability generally follows birthplace, subject to exceptions. Its practical conclusion is to distinguish the employer’s process from the worker’s status and from visa-number availability. Those three clocks do not necessarily move together.

The reporting cutoff leaves important questions open

This assessment preserves the underlying audit’s October 12, 2026 cutoff. At that point, it had not verified equivalent detailed responses from Wipro, Cognizant, HCL, Capgemini or Adobe. Absence of a verified response in that reporting is not evidence that an employer has no defence.

The source gave no fixed public end date for the suspension. It treated legal challenges and policy changes as possibilities rather than completed remedies. The differing TCS figures, employer-specific application exposure and individual immigration circumstances were not resolved by the aggregate statistics.

A reader making a real decision needs current information about the sponsoring entity, filing stage, priority date, petition decision and status expiry, with qualified immigration advice. This historical analysis is not an individual eligibility assessment, and it does not claim that the source’s October observations remain unchanged.

Protecting workers requires evidence as well as enforcement

The strongest conclusion is narrower than either a blanket reassurance or a claim that American employment routes have closed. The reported action interrupted one permanent-residency process for named employers. It did not, on the evidence described by the audit, automatically cancel every associated work visa or prove every allegation of recruitment abuse.

Effective worker protection requires genuine vacancies, fair recruitment and enforcement based on the relevant employment records. Fair treatment of lawful applicants requires equal care about what has and has not changed in their particular cases. Both principles are weakened when unlike counts or different immigration stages are treated as interchangeable.

The test is therefore documentary: identify the employer, job, filing and applicable status; distinguish an allegation from a finding; and preserve the limits of the evidence. That approach gives domestic workers’ protections and international professionals’ legitimate expectations a more reliable basis than headline totals alone.