TOI Correspondent from Washington: The Trump administration on Thursday suspended eight major Indian or strongly India-linked tech companies from the US program used by employers to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residence (green card), a move that could affect tens of thousands of Indian IT professionals.The administration also announced investigations into nine universities, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, over allegations that international students and foreign workers are being used to reduce labour costs or compromise federally funded research.In more strikes against global companies and foreigners, mainly Indians, accused of “stealing American jobs,” Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling, with veep JD Vance standing alongside, announced that the Department of Labour was suspending Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe from the Permanent Labour Certification, or PERM, program.PERM is an important step in the employment-based green-card process; before sponsoring most foreign workers for employment-based permanent residence, an employer must generally obtain certification from the Labour Department that there are not sufficient qualified, willing and available US workers for the particular position and that hiring the foreign worker will not adversely affect US wages and working conditions.According to Sonderling, the eight companies had collectively requested almost three million foreign workers since 2009, received more than 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and obtained more than 100,000 permanent labour certifications. “That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers,” he asserted, declaring that the DOL would not accept any new or process any pending permanent labour certification applications involving these companies.However, industry veterans say H-1B approvals and PERM certifications measure foreign workers hired or sponsored, not Americans who lost jobs. Studies by the Census Bureau and National Academies have found little evidence of broad displacement of native-born workers from skilled immigration. The figures show the scale of foreign-worker hiring by the companies, but not how many of those jobs would otherwise have gone to Americans. The tech industry insists the US simply does not produce enough STEM graduates to meet demand.For now, the suspension primarily affects the transition from temporary employment to permanent residence but does not for now cancel H-1B visas or immediately prevent the affected companies from employing foreign workers. But the impact of PERM suspension will be significant for Indian tech workers because Indian nationals account for a large share of H-1B workers and employment-based green-card applicants. Many Indian professionals work for large tech services companies such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL and Cognizant while waiting for their employers to sponsor them for permanent residence.While the suspension does not automatically invalidate PERM certifications that have already been approved nor prevent an employee from obtaining employment-based permanent residence through another employer that is not subject to the suspension, the consequences could be more serious for H-1B workers approaching the six-year limit on their temporary status. Under US immigration law, certain H-1B workers can obtain extensions beyond six years when they have reached particular stages of the employment-based green-card process. Delays in starting or advancing a PERM case can therefore become an immigration problem for workers who are close to that deadline.Unlike some of the Trump administration’s other immigration initiatives, Thursday’s action does not appear to require the government to first issue a new regulation and seek public comments. Existing DOL regulations give the agency authority to suspend processing of PERM applications when it has reason to believe that an employer, attorney or agent may have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation, or when an investigation is under way. The regulations permit a suspension for an initial period of up to 180 days and allow it to continue under certain circumstances. However, the affected companies could still challenge the action in federal court.The administration has presented the move as part of a broader effort to make American companies hire more US workers. “Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” said Veep JD Vance, whose presence at the announcement also gave the action a broader political significance. Immigration and foreign-worker policy have become central issues for the administration’s America First agenda, particularly on the eve of mid-term elections, and Vance has emerged as a strong advocate for reducing what he describes as excessive corporate dependence on foreign labour.Incidentally, of the eight companies that face PERM suspension, two US-based companies, Microsoft and Adobe, have Indian-American CEOs (Satya Nadella and Shantanu Narayen transitioning to Anil Chakravarthy), while Cap Gemini’s CEO is Aiman Ezzat, an Egypt-born French national. Vance’s position on the issue has attracted particular attention because he is married to Usha Vance, the US-born daughter of Indian immigrants who came to America through the academic route.
