On Thursday, October 8, the US Department of Labor said it had stopped handling green card paperwork for eight large employers, according to reports of the announcement by CNBC, SHRM and the law firm Ellis. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling named them at a press event on the White House campus: Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini. He appeared alongside Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The step was short to announce and is likely to be slow to unwind. Here is what was said, what the department has and has not put in writing, and how it fits with the other immigration measures the administration has taken this year. At the end we set it beside a different White House document from two weeks earlier, the voluntary AI safety accord signed on September 29, because the two show how differently the same government is treating two parts of the tech industry.
Update, Oct 15, 2026
The J-1 probe. A J-1 visa lets foreign nationals come to the US for a limited time on exchange programs, including research posts. On October 9 the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), its internal watchdog, said Inspector General Anthony P. D’Esposito had served subpoenas on nine universities: Pitt, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Brown, UC Davis, Caltech, Arizona State and MIT. A subpoena is a legal demand for documents. OIG says the investigation concerns alleged misuse and misclassification of J-1 researchers. By OIG’s figures, about 61% of the federally grant-funded postdocs and researchers at the nine schools are foreign nationals, against 38% at other universities. OIG also set up a Visa Fraud Strike Team that draws on several agencies: the Labor Department, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, USCIS, Homeland Security Investigations and the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service. No findings have been made and no one has been charged. Stanford said it will cooperate with the investigation, Inside Higher Ed reported.
The task-force link. OIG says these announcements were made on Thursday, October 8, at a “White House Fraud Task Force event.” Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling were there, and the PERM suspensions were announced the same day. CNN reports that Vance chairs that task force and that its investigation led to the Microsoft suspension. The Labor Department has not given an end date for the suspension.
The Genesis Mission pledge. This is related context. The Genesis Mission is the White House program for using advanced AI across federal science agencies. At the “Science: A New Golden Age” summit on October 8, the White House said eleven companies had pledged $2.4 billion in AI tools and compute credits for it. Nvidia pledged $1 billion and AMD $500 million. These are voluntary pledges that have been announced. They are not contracts or delivered funding.
What PERM is
PERM is the Labor Department’s permanent labor certification program. It is the first step for most employment-based green cards in the EB-2 and EB-3 categories. Before an employer can sponsor a foreign worker for permanent residence through PERM, it has to advertise the job, test the US labor market and show the department that no qualified US worker is available and that hiring the foreign worker will not lower pay for similar US workers. The department sets a minimum wage for the role, called the prevailing wage. Once the department certifies the application, the employer files a separate petition, Form I-140, with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the worker later applies for the green card itself.
PERM is a different thing from the H-1B. The H-1B is a temporary work visa for “specialty occupations,” usually jobs that need at least a bachelor’s degree. Many H-1B workers are on a path from one to the other, which is why a PERM freeze matters to people whose H-1B status is untouched.
What was announced on October 8
According to CNBC’s report from the event, Sonderling said the department would not accept or process new applications under the program for Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL, and that Adobe and Microsoft were also suspended “due to multiple active federal investigations.” Several outlets and law firms reported the same line from Sonderling: “We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies.”
Sonderling also gave figures for the group. “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,” he said, as quoted by CNBC. CTN has not checked those totals against Labor Department disclosure data.
Vance focused on Microsoft. SHRM reported that he cited USCIS data showing Microsoft received 6,258 H-1B approvals in the last fiscal year and filed 3,157 PERM cases. “In the last year, Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers. At the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards,” he said, according to SHRM. CNBC quoted him saying the government would “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.” Asked how long the suspension would last, Vance said it is “going to last as long as it needs to,” as reported by Manifest Law and others.
Ellis, an immigration law firm that published an explainer the same day, reported that Blanche said criminal charges against companies or people are possible. CTN has not found a transcript of that remark.
No end date was given. Nobody at the event cited a regulation, and no written description of the allegations against any of the eight has been published.
What the Labor Department has put in writing
Very little, as of Monday morning. CTN checked the department’s news release page and the announcements page of its Office of Foreign Labor Certification, which runs PERM. Neither carried a release, notice or order on the suspension. The most recent item on the news release page was dated October 9 and concerned Sonderling being sworn in as the 31st Secretary of Labor. That release says he had led the department as Acting Secretary since April 2026, which explains why some October 8 reports call him acting secretary and others call him secretary. The last item on the foreign labor announcements page was dated September 17. Nothing on the suspension has appeared in the Federal Register.
So the primary record for now is the press event itself, as reported by CNBC, SHRM and Ellis. Several law firms, including Badmus & Associates and Meltzer Hellrung, noted the same gap in their client alerts.
The rule that might be behind it
The PERM regulations do contain a tool that fits what was described. Meltzer Hellrung, a Chicago immigration firm, wrote on October 9 that “one possible source of authority is 20 C.F.R. § 656.31(b),” which lets the department suspend PERM processing while it investigates possible fraud or willful misrepresentation. The firm stressed that the department “has not cited a specific regulation or stated how long the suspensions will last.”
If the department is relying on that section, the firm said, a first suspension can run up to 180 days and can be extended while an investigation or court case stays open. Its advice to employers was not to assume processing restarts on its own at the six-month mark. Other firms add that the same rule expects written notice to the employer unless the investigating agency asks otherwise in writing, and that if no fraud is found the department must decide each pending application on its merits. Debarment, a ban of up to three years, is a separate and later step under the same section. None of the eight has been debarred.
That is the law firms’ reading of a rule the department has not invoked in public. CTN treats it as a plausible frame and nothing more.
What the companies have said
Microsoft responded on the day. CNBC and SHRM both carried a company statement saying “the vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans” and that “of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications we submitted in the last fiscal year, 80% percent were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees.” The longer version given to SHRM added that the company pays its H-1B employees “the same as any other employees doing comparable work.”
CNBC said it had reached out to Adobe. CTN found no public statement from Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies or Capgemini on the suspension. CTN has not yet requested comment from the companies or DOL.
The $100,000 entry restriction
The PERM step lands on top of a year of changes to the H-1B program. The most expensive is a presidential proclamation. A proclamation is a formal statement by the president; under section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, it can restrict the entry of classes of foreign nationals without going through rulemaking.
Proclamation 10973, signed September 19, 2025, restricted entry of H-1B workers unless their petitions were “accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000,” with narrow exceptions. It took effect on September 21, 2025, for 12 months.
On September 18, 2026, the president signed Proclamation 11069, published in the Federal Register on September 23 (document 2026-19554). It extends the 2025 restriction “for an additional 12 months, until 12:00 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2027.” The text says the $100,000 payment “has been made for over 700 petitions” since the first proclamation took effect. It also cites a fall in combined H-1B registrations by the largest IT staffing and outsourcing firms from 24,946 to 2,055. The proclamation’s operative section words the end point slightly differently, saying the restriction expires, absent extension, 12 months after an effective date of 12:01 a.m. on September 21, 2026. Both readings land on September 21, 2027. The four cabinet officers must send the president a recommendation on any further extension within 30 days after the next H-1B lottery.
The payment has also been in court. On June 8, 2026, the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the agency guidance implementing the payment, in California et al. v. Mullin. The government appealed in June, according to a footnote in DHS’s fee proposal, discussed below. The court’s judgment (Civil No. 25-13829-LTS, Doc. 107, on CourtListener) confirms the vacatur. On July 24 the First Circuit denied the government’s motion to stay that ruling, and USCIS says it is complying with the order and not collecting the payment while DHS considers next steps, though it plans to collect if the order is lifted.
On the same day, the president also signed Executive Order 14431, which directs agencies to consider, when processing H-1B petitions, whether the sponsor “engaged in layoffs within the previous year or plans future layoffs” affecting similarly situated US workers. That is the thread Vance pulled on with Microsoft.
The proposed $103,265 fee
A notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM, is the stage where an agency publishes the rule it intends to adopt and asks the public to comment. It has no legal force until a final rule follows.
On August 25, 2026, DHS published an NPRM titled “Fee for Certain H-1B Petitions” (document 2026-17324, 91 FR 54817). It proposes “a $103,265 fee, payable at the time of filing, for all H-1B cap-subject petitions, including those eligible for the advanced degree exemption.” Cap-subject petitions are the ones that count against the annual limit of 85,000 new H-1Bs. DHS projects about $8.8 billion a year in revenue on that volume. The agency notes the figure is close to the proclamation’s $100,000 but says the fee rests on different legal authority.
A correction published September 10 replaced a table of past H-1B receipts. The comment period closed September 24. The fee is proposed only. No final rule has been published, and nobody owes it today.
The fee change that is in effect on Friday
A separate DHS notice is already set to take effect. On October 1, USCIS published its fiscal 2027 inflation adjustment to fees created by H.R. 1, the 2025 budget law (document 2026-20187). The new amounts apply to requests postmarked on or after October 16, 2026, using a 3.36 percent rise in consumer prices.
CTN read the full fee table. It has thirteen lines, covering asylum, employment authorization documents for asylum seekers, parolees and people with Temporary Protected Status, the TPS fee, special immigrant juveniles, the parole fee and the I-94 fee. None of the lines names the H-1B or the I-129 petition that employers use for it. Readers who saw this notice described as an H-1B fee increase can relax on that point, at least.
The rules that changed the lottery and that may change wages
Two more rules complete the set.
DHS published a final rule on December 29, 2025, “Weighted Selection Process for Registrants and Petitioners Seeking To File Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions” (90 FR 60864). It took effect on February 27, 2026. Instead of a flat random draw, the lottery now gives more weight to registrations at higher wage levels. The 2026 proclamation says it was in effect for the fiscal 2027 cap season and that registrations for beneficiaries with at least a US master’s degree rose from 45.1 percent of the total for fiscal 2026 to 66.1 percent for fiscal 2027. This one is final and in effect.
The Labor Department published an NPRM on March 27, 2026, “Improving Wage Protections for the Temporary and Permanent Employment of Certain Foreign Nationals in the United States” (91 FR 15454). It would change how the four prevailing wage levels are computed for both PERM and H-1B labor condition applications, with the stated aim of aligning them with wages paid to similar US workers. Comments closed on May 26. It is still a proposal; the September proclamation refers to it as a rule that will take effect “once finalized.”
SHRM reports that the department is also working on a separate proposal to revise the PERM labor market test, which it says is under review at the White House Office of Management and Budget. CTN has not seen that text.
The AI accord, two weeks earlier
On September 29, the president hosted a lunch with AI executives and announced what the American Presidency Project’s archive titles the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence.” The document itself is headed “Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities.” It is signed by the president and by Sundar Pichai of Google, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Greg Brockman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of xAI and Jensen Huang of Nvidia.
The text is short. It says each company “should implement the following four layers of controls and audits.” The first is internal controls to monitor the capabilities and alignment of models in areas like cybersecurity, biosecurity and chemical threats. The second is an internal team to check those controls work. The third is an independent external auditor or evaluator. The fourth is an independent committee of the company’s board to oversee the whole arrangement. The companies “will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices.” The document adds that “over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations.”
There is no agency named to supervise it, no penalty and no reporting requirement in the text. Asked by reporters whether the deal was binding, the president said, “I think it’s morally binding,” according to CBS News. He also said, “I think I’m seeing tremendous self-policing.”
Two policies side by side
Put the two weeks next to each other and a pattern is visible in the instruments the administration chose.
For frontier AI models, the government’s main new step this autumn is a voluntary commitment that the companies drafted controls for and will police themselves. It runs on trust and peer meetings, and leaves legislation as a possibility for later.
For the people who build software at large tech and IT services companies, the instruments are mandatory and specific. There is a $100,000 payment now extended to September 2027 (though not collected while the Mullin ruling stands), a lottery rewritten by final rule, a proposed fee above $100,000 per cap-subject petition, a proposed wage rule, a layoff test written into an executive order and, since Thursday, a freeze on green card certification for eight named employers with no stated end date.
Some companies sit on both sides. Microsoft was not a signatory to the AI accord, but its chief executive, Satya Nadella, received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from the president on the same day and at the same summit as the PERM announcement, according to the White House. Huang and Musk, both accord signatories, were being honoured at the same ceremony. Vance used Musk as his example of the kind of immigrant the administration welcomes.
None of this shows a contradiction in the administration’s own terms. Officials have described the immigration measures as protecting US workers, and the accord as a way to let AI companies move fast while promising care. The two policies can be read as consistent priorities. They do show a government that is comfortable with self-regulation for one part of the tech industry and is choosing enforcement for another, and the difference is worth keeping in view as both develop.
What it means for workers at the eight companies
The suspension covers PERM, not H-1B status, according to Ellis and SHRM. People working at the eight companies on an H-1B can keep working. The pressure shows up in timing. Many H-1B workers rely on a pending PERM case to extend status beyond the usual six-year limit, and employers must generally file PERM within 180 days of their recruitment, so a long freeze can force recruitment to start over. Ellis notes that a worker with an I-140 approved for at least 180 days usually keeps their place in line. These are law firms’ readings of how the rules interact, and individual cases will differ.
What to watch
- October 16, 2026: the DHS fiscal 2027 H.R. 1 fee amounts take effect for requests postmarked that day or later. None of the lines in the table is an H-1B fee.
- Any day: a written Labor Department notice, release or Federal Register document on the PERM suspension. That would show the legal authority, the scope and any time limit. If it relies on 20 CFR 656.31(b), the law firms’ reading points to an initial term of up to 180 days.
- No date set: a final rule on the proposed $103,265 H-1B fee. Comments closed September 24; DHS has not said when it will finalize.
- No date set: a final version of the DOL wage rule. Comments closed May 26.
- No date set: the First Circuit appeal in California et al. v. Mullin over the $100,000 payment guidance, after the court denied a stay on July 24; USCIS is not collecting the payment meanwhile.
- Within 30 days after the next H-1B lottery: the cabinet recommendation on whether to extend the $100,000 restriction past September 21, 2027, as required by section 3(b) of Proclamation 11069.
- No date set: the president said on September 29 that he would name someone to oversee the AI accord, Euronews reported. CTN has not seen an appointment.
Method note
CTN read the full Federal Register text of Proclamation 11069, the DHS fee NPRM and its September 10 correction, the DHS fiscal 2027 fee notice and Executive Order 14431, and used Federal Register records for the weighted-selection final rule and the DOL wage NPRM, including their dates and status. CTN checked the Labor Department’s news release page and the Office of Foreign Labor Certification announcements page on October 12 and found no release or notice on the PERM suspension. Quotes from the October 8 event come from CNBC, SHRM and law firm accounts as attributed; CTN did not attend and has not seen a transcript. The suggestion that 20 CFR 656.31(b) is the authority comes from Meltzer Hellrung and other law firms. The AI accord text is from the American Presidency Project archive at UC Santa Barbara. CTN has not yet requested comment from the companies or DOL.
Correction, Oct 15, 2026: An earlier version of this story said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was due to receive the National Medal of Science. He received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, a separate award, at the October 8 summit. This story has also been updated to say the government appealed the Mullin ruling in June, according to a footnote in DHS’s fee proposal, rather than giving a specific date.
Sources
- US District Court, D. Mass., California et al. v. Mullin, No. 25-13829-LTS, Judgment, Jun 8, 2026: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.293201/gov.uscourts.mad.293201.107.0.pdf
- First Circuit, order denying stay, Jul 24, 2026: https://iptp-production.s3.amazonaws.com/media/documents/2026.07.24_Order_-_California_v._Mullin.pdf
- USCIS, “H-1B FAQ” (alert on Mullin): https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/h-1b-faq
- CNBC, “U.S. suspends Microsoft, Adobe from green card labor program in foreign worker crackdown,” Oct 8, 2026: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/08/microsoft-adobe-green-card-labor-suspension.html
- SHRM, “PERM Suspensions Latest Blow to Immigration Programs,” Oct 8, 2026: https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/microsoft-adobe-perm-suspensions
- Ellis, “Labor Department Suspends Microsoft, Adobe, and 6 IT Firms From PERM Green Card Program,” Oct 8, 2026: https://www.ellis.com/resources/perm-suspension-microsoft-adobe
- Meltzer Hellrung, “DOL Suspends PERM Processing for Microsoft, Adobe, and Major IT Services Firms,” Oct 9, 2026: https://meltzerhellrung.com/dol-suspends-perm-processing-for-microsoft-adobe-and-major-it-services-firms/
- Badmus & Associates client alert: https://badmuslaw.com/blog/eight-employers-lose-green-card-sponsorship-what-every-other-sponsor-should-know/
- Manifest Law, “DOL Halts PERM for 8 Tech Companies,” Oct 8, 2026: https://manifestlaw.com/news/dol-halts-perm-news-10-08-26
- US Department of Labor news releases (checked Oct 12, 2026): https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases
- DOL Office of Foreign Labor Certification announcements (checked Oct 12, 2026): https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/news
- Proclamation 11069, 91 FR 60497, Sep 23, 2026 (doc 2026-19554): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/23/2026-19554/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers
- Executive Order 14431, 91 FR 60501, Sep 23, 2026 (doc 2026-19555): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/23/2026-19555/enhancing-program-integrity-and-interagency-coordination-in-the-administration-of-the-h-1b
- DHS NPRM, “Fee for Certain H-1B Petitions,” 91 FR 54817, Aug 25, 2026 (doc 2026-17324): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/25/2026-17324/fee-for-certain-h-1b-petitions
- Correction, 91 FR 57516, Sep 10, 2026: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/10/C1-2026-17324/fee-for-certain-h-1b-petitions
- USCIS/DHS, “Fiscal Year 2027 Inflation Adjustment to H.R. 1 Immigration Fees,” 91 FR 62540, Oct 1, 2026 (doc 2026-20187): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/01/2026-20187/fiscal-year-2027-inflation-adjustment-to-hr-1-immigration-fees
- DHS final rule, Weighted Selection, 90 FR 60864, Dec 29, 2025 (doc 2025-23853): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/29/2025-23853/weighted-selection-process-for-registrants-and-petitioners-seeking-to-file-cap-subject-h-1b
- DOL NPRM, Improving Wage Protections, 91 FR 15454, Mar 27, 2026 (doc 2026-06017): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/03/27/2026-06017/improving-wage-protections-for-the-temporary-and-permanent-employment-of-certain-foreign-nationals
- American Presidency Project, “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” Sep 29, 2026: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/white-house-accord-super-intelligence
- CBS News, “Trump and major AI executives sign ‘morally binding’ voluntary controls,” Sep 29, 2026: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-ai-constitution-tech-execs-openai-anthropic-voluntary-controls/
- Euronews, Sep 30, 2026: https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/30/unlike-the-eu-trumps-new-ai-pact-lets-tech-companies-police-themselves
- DOL Office of Inspector General, “DOL Inspector General D’Esposito Announces Historic Fraud Investigation into University J-1 Visa Programs,” Oct 9, 2026: https://oig.dol.gov/public/Press%20Releases/OIG-Press-Release-100926.htm
- Inside Higher Ed, “9 Universities Accused of J-1 Visa Fraud,” Oct 9, 2026: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/2026/10/09/9-universities-accused-j-1-visa-fraud
- CNN, “Trump admin bars Microsoft and other tech companies from seeking permanent residency for foreign workers,” Oct 8, 2026: https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/08/politics/vance-fraud-microsoft-immigrant
- The White House, “Fact Sheet: Trump Administration Announces the Most Ambitious Set of Science Initiatives This Century,” Oct 8, 2026: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/10/fact-sheet-trump-administration-announces-the-most-ambitious-set-of-science-initiatives-this-century/
- Nextgov/FCW, “White House unveils billions in investments for Genesis Mission,” Oct 8, 2026: https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2026/10/white-house-unveils-billions-investments-genesis-mission/416517/
- The White House, “President Trump Presents National Medals of Science and National Medals of Technology and Innovation,” Oct 8, 2026: https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/10/president-trump-presents-national-medals-of-science-and-national-medals-of-technology-and-innovation/