Trump’s PERM Pause Could Hurt US

The Trump administration's announcement to suspend Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program, the core pathway to employment-based green cards, for eight major technology and outsourcing companies, including India's Infosys, Tata, Wipro and HCL, will serve as a disadvantage for US itself, a media report said.

The action also covers Cognizant, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe. It prevents the companies from filing new permanent labour certification applications and halts the processing of pending applications under the programme.

According to a report published in Khalsa Vox, immigrant-founded or co-founded unicorns—many with Indian roots—have created enormous value and employment in the US.

"Therefore, closing off permanence does not magically produce equivalent American talent overnight; it signals that even those who play by the rules may never fully belong."

Antariksh Singh noted in the report that companies facing higher uncertainty will accelerate offshoring or nearshoring of work, which is the opposite of the stated goal.

"Talent that once chose America will choose places that offer clearer paths to settlement. Competitors benefit."

The report also said that the decision taken by President Donald Trump-led US administration, though does not cancel existing H-1B visas, "but it freezes the pathway to permanent residency for thousands of Indian professionals who have spent years building careers, paying taxes, and putting down roots".

Maintaining that Indians already dominate the employment-based backlog, it mentioned that those nearing the six-year H-1B limit without an approved path to extension now face the prospect of having to leave just as their lives in the United States stabilise.

"Families, children's schooling, mortgages, and community ties hang in limbo. The rhetoric of 'indentured servants' only deepens the insult to highly educated engineers, programmers, and researchers who came through legal channels and fill genuine skill gaps," Antariksh Singh said in Khalsa Vox.

Meanwhile, American Vice-President J.D. Vance accused employers of using the H-1B programme to replace American workers with lower-paid foreign employees.

"The H-1B visa program is meant to allow companies to bring in really the best of the best from outside the United States of America for positions that are completely impossible to fill with American workers," he said.

He singled out Microsoft, alleging that the company had laid off 6,000 American workers while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards.

Vance said the US administration wanted companies to change their hiring practices rather than leave the American market.