Eight Companies Can No Longer File PERM. What Workers Already in the Pipeline Need to Know.

What DOL did on October 8

On October 8, 2026, the Department of Labor suspended eight companies from the PERM labor certification program. The announcement came from Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling alongside Vice President JD Vance in a joint statement. The eight companies are Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini.

The suspension has two distinct effects. DOL will not accept new PERM applications from any of these companies. And DOL has suspended processing of applications already filed and awaiting a decision. If your employer submitted a PERM application for you before October 8 and it was still pending, that application is now frozen — no audit notice, no documentation request, no certification, and no denial while the suspension holds.

The stated reason varies by company. Sonderling characterized Microsoft and Adobe as being under active federal investigations. The suspensions of the six outsourcing firms were framed around fraud allegations tied to the labor certification process. DOL had not published the underlying suspension orders in full as of this writing.

The eight companies — and what's notable about the list

The eight suspended companies break into two groups. The first is six Indian IT outsourcing and consulting firms: Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini. These companies collectively employ a substantial portion of the H-1B workforce in the United States and have been central targets in the H-1B reform debate for years. The second group is Microsoft and Adobe — two U.S.-headquartered technology companies under active federal investigation.

Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple, IBM, and Oracle are not on the list. The exclusion of other large U.S. technology employers is significant. Whether this reflects the specific scope of federal investigations or a deliberate policy framing around IT outsourcing specifically will become clearer as details of the underlying proceedings emerge.

DOL has not published a specific list of the legal entities covered. Microsoft and Cognizant each operate through multiple subsidiaries. A PERM filed by a specific legal entity within one of these companies may or may not be covered depending on which entity submitted it. If you work at one of these companies, do not assume your case is frozen without confirming the specific legal entity your employer used on your PERM filing.

What suspended means for a pending PERM

A PERM application that was pending at DOL on October 8 is now in suspension. The application exists in the system but is not being worked. DOL's normal PERM processing timelines — three to nine months for standard cases, longer for audit cases — do not apply to these frozen applications. There is no current processing pathway for them.

The legal authority for employer PERM suspensions is 20 CFR 656.31(b). This regulation allows DOL to suspend an employer's participation in the PERM program during an investigation or judicial proceeding. An initial suspension runs up to 180 days and can be extended for as long as the underlying matter remains unresolved. There is no maximum total duration if an investigation continues for years.

For a worker whose PERM is frozen, the practical consequence is a hold on the step needed to file an I-140. The priority date — established when DOL received the PERM application — is preserved regardless. But PERM certification is required before an employer can file the I-140 petition. Until the suspension lifts or the PERM is certified, that step cannot happen.

What the suspension does not touch

H-1B status is not affected by the PERM suspension. An employer's PERM freeze does not limit its ability to sponsor H-1B petitions, file H-1B extensions, or pay H-1B filing fees on behalf of employees. If you are currently on H-1B status at one of the eight companies, your work authorization is not impaired by this specific action.

Approved I-140 petitions are not revoked by this action. If your employer had a certified PERM and used it to file an I-140 that USCIS already approved prior to October 8, that approval is intact. The suspension covers pending and new PERM applications. It does not retroactively invalidate PERM certifications that were already issued, and it does not affect I-140 approvals that USCIS already granted.

Priority date preservation for an approved I-140 works the same way it always has. An approved I-140 locks in your priority date. If you change employers later, that priority date carries forward under standard I-140 priority date retention rules. The PERM suspension does not create any new complication for workers who had already cleared the PERM and I-140 stages and are now waiting for their priority date to become current.

What the forums are getting wrong

The most common misread in immigration forums right now is that an approved I-140 is at risk because of the PERM suspension. It is not. USCIS can revoke an I-140 for separate reasons — fraud findings, employer going out of business, material misrepresentation — but a DOL PERM suspension under 20 CFR 656.31(b) is not a revocation trigger for a previously approved I-140. Unless DOL separately issues a debarment finding that reaches back to prior certifications, approved I-140s remain valid.

The second misread is that workers with a frozen PERM should immediately change employers to protect their green card case. This gets the mechanics backwards. AC21 portability requires a pending I-485, not just an approved I-140. If you do not have a pending I-485, changing employers does not activate AC21 portability. You would leave your frozen PERM behind, along with the priority date tied to it, and have no mechanism to carry that priority date to a new employer.

There is also no general mechanism for transferring a pending PERM to a new employer. A pending PERM belongs to the employer that filed it. If you change employers, a new employer would need to start the PERM process from the beginning — prevailing wage determination, recruitment, application to DOL — and the resulting priority date would be the date of the new PERM filing, not the original one.

The 180-day clock

The initial suspension period under 20 CFR 656.31(b) runs up to 180 days from the suspension date. From October 8, that puts an initial expiration in early April 2027, assuming DOL does not extend it. An extension can be requested when an investigation or judicial proceeding remains unresolved at the 180-day mark. There is no cap on the number of extensions.

For workers with frozen PERM applications, the question is whether to wait or to plan around the suspension. Waiting is reasonable if the investigation resolves quickly and DOL resumes processing. But there is no basis for predicting when — or whether — that happens. The investigations that DOL cited in the October 8 announcement are active, and federal white-collar investigations of this scale typically take years to resolve.

If you are close enough to the front of the priority date queue that a delay of six to eighteen months materially affects your green card timeline, this suspension is a serious problem. If your priority date is years from current, the suspension creates uncertainty but does not immediately change your practical filing horizon. In both cases, the right first step is understanding exactly where your PERM case stands — not estimating from public announcements.

The political signal in this announcement

Vice President Vance's presence at the October 8 announcement was not accidental. PERM employer suspensions are ordinarily a technical enforcement action handled by DOL's Office of Foreign Labor Certification. Announcing one in a joint statement with the sitting Vice President signals that this is being treated as a high-profile policy action, not a routine enforcement matter.

The selection of companies — six Indian IT outsourcing firms plus Microsoft and Adobe — lands at the intersection of two political narratives the current administration has emphasized: H-1B abuse in the IT outsourcing sector, and tech company conduct under federal scrutiny. These are distinct allegations merged into a single enforcement action. The legal durability of suspensions premised on separate legal theories for different companies is worth watching.

The outsourcing companies on the list have collectively been the subject of H-1B reform rhetoric for years. The PERM suspension takes a different approach from prior H-1B reform efforts: it does not change H-1B rules but blocks the route to permanent residence for workers at these companies. The workers who have been in the PERM pipeline for years — many of them Indian nationals who have waited a decade or more for a priority date to become current — bear the direct consequence of this dispute.

If you are at one of these companies right now

The most important immediate step is getting clarity from your employer's immigration team about exactly where your case stands. Three situations have meaningfully different implications. First, if your PERM was already certified before October 8 and your employer has filed an I-140: the suspension likely does not touch you. Second, if your PERM was certified before October 8 but I-140 has not yet been filed: your employer can still file the I-140, since the suspension covers PERM filings to DOL, not I-140 petitions to USCIS. Third, if your PERM was pending at DOL on October 8: it is frozen, and you need a clear picture of what that means for your specific timeline.

Talk to a licensed immigration attorney independently, not only through your employer's internal immigration team. Corporate immigration teams and retained law firms work for the employer. An independent attorney can evaluate your specific facts — where you are in the priority date queue, whether you have a pending I-485, what your AC21 options look like — and give you an assessment that represents your interests.

This article is informational only and does not constitute legal advice. The PERM suspension announced on October 8, 2026 is an active enforcement situation with details that continue to develop. The regulatory provisions cited here — 20 CFR 656.31(b) — are drawn from secondary law firm and news sources, not from the official DOL suspension order, which had not been publicly released in full as of this writing. Verify current facts with the Department of Labor and a licensed immigration attorney before making any decisions about your employment or immigration status.