U.S. suspends Microsoft, Adobe from green-card labor program in foreign worker crackdown

TechPublished Thu, Oct 8 202611:24 AM EDTUpdated 2 Min AgoKey PointsThe U.S. Labor Department announced it would suspend Microsoft and Adobe from its Permanent Labor Certification. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL were also suspended from the program.US Labor Secretary Keith E. Sonderling speaks, flanked by Attorney General Todd Blanche and US Vice President JD Vance as they make an H-1B fraud announcement during a press conference on anti-fraud initiatives in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington, D.C., US, October 8, 2026.Nathan Howard | ReutersThe U.S. Department of Labor announced it would suspend Microsoft and Adobe from its Permanent Labor Certification program on Thursday, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said, as the Trump administration continues to take aim at immigration and foreign hiring programs ahead of November's midterm elections.Sonderling said the Labor Department won't accept or process any new applications under the program for a host of companies, including Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL.The secretary said Adobe and Microsoft were also suspended "due to multiple active federal investigations.""Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers. They've received over 230,000 H-1B visas approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications. That's hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers," Sonderling said.Vice President JD Vance criticized Microsoft specifically, pointing to the firm's 6,000 layoffs in 2025. Vance claimed that the company "replaced" those workers with people on H-1B visas."So we're going to continue to support Microsoft and have a great relationship with Microsoft, but 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," Vance said.President Donald Trump is set to award the National Medal of Science to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and other leading technology CEOs on Thursday at the same summit where the suspension announcement was made.Nadella is from India and moved to the U.S. in 1988. He joined Microsoft in 1992.CNBC has reached out to Microsoft and Adobe for comment. Read more CNBC tech newsGoogle ordered to halt work on two data centers in 'Texas of Europe'Meta joins with group of companies to tame 'chaos' of doing business with AI botsAnduril lands $2.9 billion Navy submarine shipyard contract days after Luckey joins Pentagon weapons groupAnthropic expands Claude Startups program in bid to snag founders and fast-growing companies