On October 8, the United States suspended several companies from the Permanent Labor Certification Program, which allows employers to apply for green cards for H-1B visa workers, saying the practice takes jobs away from Americans. The most affected firms are Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro and HCL.
US Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the government would not accept or process any new or pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies.
The action is the latest pressure point in the Trump administration's broader economic campaign against India. It follows the Essar Group's American subsidiary announcing an $18 billion investment in a US steel project, which the president has cited as evidence that his tariff policy is bringing manufacturing investment to the United States.
Vice President J.D. Vance said the suspension was a response to companies abusing the system to hire lower-paid foreign workers at the expense of US workers. He directed particular criticism at Microsoft, whose chief executive, Satya Nadella, is of Indian origin, asserting that "no company in the United States, unfortunately, has abused this system more than Microsoft." According to Microsoft's diversity data, Asian employees make up approximately 34.9 percent of its workforce, with some observers saying a major share are of Indian origin.
US journalist Fareed Zakaria argued the president, a former real estate developer, assesses who holds more leverage and pushes as hard as possible to extract maximum advantage, noting that the US market is India's Achilles' heel. The United States remains a major destination for Indian goods, a critical market for Indian IT companies and a key source of employment for Indian professionals. The administration, as he put it, is welcoming foreign capital, not foreign labor.