Labor froze green-card filings at Microsoft, Adobe, and six IT firms. H-1B jobs were left alone.

On October 8, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling told reporters his department will not take a new permanent labor certification from eight employers, and will not process the ones already in the stack. The eight are Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini. Vice President JD Vance stood with him in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The H-1B visas those companies already hold were left alone.

The certification is the employer's form saying it advertised the job and could not find a qualified American worker. The Labor Department calls it PERM. For most software and consulting roles, that form is the first step of a company-sponsored green card. Without it, a lot of H-1Bs never get a filing date in the immigrant line.

An H-1B generally lasts six years. Past that, the extensions come from a green-card case that has already been started. If a labor certification, or Form I-140, the immigrant petition that follows, has been on file for at least a year, the employer can usually ask for one more year of H-1B. If the I-140 is already approved and a green-card number is still years away, the extensions can run three years at a time. The badge on the lanyard does not say which of those files is real.

A pending case the department has stopped touching is one problem. An I-140 already approved is another. The person who never got a filing at all, with year six coming up, is the one this freeze can end.

Through October 13, lawyers watching Labor's foreign-labor page still had no written notice. Nothing has been published in the Federal Register. A department rule lets Labor pause a company's cases while an investigation runs, at first for 180 days, and longer if the investigation stays open. Sonderling never said he was using that rule. He never named an end date either. No company has been charged.

The eight names will get forwarded as one screenshot. Microsoft and Adobe make software, and Sonderling said those two were suspended because of active federal investigations. Tata, Infosys, Wipro, and HCL are Indian IT services firms, the shops that staff a bank or a retailer from Bengaluru or Noida and also keep people on a client floor here. Cognizant is based in Teaneck, New Jersey, and was already off this program in September. Capgemini is French. The freeze reads the employer on the form. The desk can be in Redmond or Dallas.

India is most of this workforce. In fiscal 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved 406,348 H-1B petitions. People born in India were 283,772 of them, about 70 percent. China was about 12 percent. The October visa bulletin is still reaching India employment cases filed in November 2013 for advanced-degree workers, and January 2014 for the skilled-worker category. Miss the certification, and there is no place in that line. Country of birth sets the queue. Someone born in China can be years ahead of a coworker born in India who sits two desks over.

Vance spent most of the press conference on Microsoft. He said the company laid off about 6,000 people in 2025, kept sponsoring foreign workers, and replaced Americans with what he called indentured servants who earn less in the same job. Microsoft answered the same day on its own site. Of about 6,000 H-1B applications in its last fiscal year, 80 percent were extensions or status changes for people already on staff. The rest, it said, were people already living in the United States, about 1 percent of its U.S. workforce, paid the same as anyone doing comparable work.

Sonderling's other number at the podium was a career total for the eight companies since 2009: almost 3 million foreign-worker requests, more than 230,000 H-1B approvals, and more than 100,000 certifications.

Hours later, President Trump presented Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Nadella was born in Hyderabad, came to the United States in 1988, and has run Microsoft since 2014. The freeze and the medal were the same Thursday.

Call the immigration team before the group chat decides you are fine. Ask whether a certification was filed, and for the date on the receipt. Ask whether the I-140 after it is already approved. Ask how many months remain before six years of H-1B. Extraordinary-ability petitions and national-interest waivers skip this certification. Whether either one fits a resume is a question for counsel who has the file open.

If a job change is already in the conversation, read the timing before anyone resigns. Visa and Job Change Runway When Leave Means Status Risk is the longer version of that month. Visa Job Change and Benefits Gap Basics for Diaspora Professionals covers the health insurance that can lapse when the status and the paycheck move together.

Get the receipt date. Then sit with someone who has walked a six-year clock before.

This is educational reporting on an October 8 announcement, Microsoft's same-day statement, the fiscal 2025 H-1B characteristics report, and the October visa bulletin. It is not immigration advice. The receipt on your own filing, and counsel who has read it, decide the next form.