Microsoft, Adobe and the PERM Freeze: Show Your Work

On October 8, the Labor Department announced a PERM freeze affecting eight employers: Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCLTech and Capgemini. Vice President Vance announced it at the White House alongside the Labor Department’s Keith Sonderling and Attorney General Todd Blanche, and he skipped the nuance: “There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft.”

PERM is the labor-certification step in many employment-based green card cases. The announced freeze reportedly covers new and pending applications, but its exact scope, implementation and route back remain unclear. It does not itself cancel anyone’s H-1B status. There is no announced end date, and I have not found a public DOL notice explaining how this works or the legal basis. That uncertainty matters when your immigration clock keeps running.

Six of those companies are IT-services firms. The other two make Windows and Photoshop. Lumping them together because they all employ H-1B workers is like lumping a hospital in with a tattoo parlor because both own needles.

Product Companies Aren’t Staffing Companies

Microsoft and Adobe hire people to build and support their own products. An engineer working on Azure is doing Microsoft’s work, and sponsoring her keeps a needed person on that team.

IT-services companies often place people on projects for end clients. The consultancy signs the paycheck while the work happens inside someone else’s business. That is where outsourcing can swap a client’s direct employees for a contractor’s workforce, and it’s why staffing arrangements have drawn questions for years about who controls the work, whether a real assignment exists and who pays between assignments. USCIS piled extra documentary demands on third-party placements through policies it rescinded in 2020, and the H-1B modernization rule that took effect in January 2025 still looks at the end client’s requirements when deciding whether a staffed job is a specialty occupation.

Even the services side isn’t one thing. Global delivery firms, mixed consultancies and small staffing shops operate very differently, and product companies use contractors too. None of this convicts or clears anybody. The government still has to show what each employer actually did.

Real violations exist. In August 2024, a DOL administrative law judge ordered New York Global Consultants to pay $102,332.96 to three H-1B workers for unpaid bench time in 2020–21. You can’t stop paying people because client work dried up.

Big tech has faced serious enforcement too. Facebook and Apple settled DOJ allegations that their PERM recruitment shut out U.S. applicants. Both denied wrongdoing. The settlements came with payments and recruitment changes, and Facebook’s separate DOL agreement included temporary pauses with a defined path back. Those cases came with public allegations and specific remedies. That is something the public can actually evaluate.

The Case Against Microsoft, So Far

The most specific public allegation I found came from a White House rapid-response account on X: Microsoft filed 3,682 PERM applications, “including nearly 1,000 applications for the same positions as the laid off American workers.”

That is a serious charge. So far, I have found a tweet, but no public job list, methodology or underlying records. Which jobs? Where, and when? Were the laid-off workers notified and considered where the regulation required it? I looked for answers and found none.

The public case against Adobe is thinner still. Sonderling said Microsoft and Adobe were suspended because of “multiple active federal investigations.” I have not found a specific public account of what Adobe supposedly did. “Under investigation” leaves a lot unanswered.

Here is how title matching can go wrong. Take a hypothetical company with 1,000 software engineers. It lays off 100, then files PERM applications for 100 of the 900 it kept. Nobody replaced anybody. The company got smaller and kept sponsoring people already on payroll.

Those existing employees’ cases still have to clear the PERM layoff rule, including notice to and consideration of potentially qualified laid-off U.S. workers where it applies. Matching titles doesn’t show anyone skipped that step. If the method is matching “software engineer” on one list to “software engineer” on another, then every company that ever laid off one accountant and kept another is running a fraud ring. Show your work.

What DOL Needs Before It Pulls This Lever

DOL can suspend PERM processing during an investigation into possible PERM fraud or willful misrepresentation, initially for up to 180 days and longer if the investigation or court proceedings continue. It can refer the matter for investigation or act after learning another agency is already investigating. Written notice normally goes to the employer, unless the investigating agency asks DOL in writing to withhold it. A filed complaint is not required.

That gives DOL room to investigate before showing its full hand. It doesn’t tell us which authority DOL used here, what supports this particular freeze, or how it is handling new filings. Those are fair questions.

Compare Cloudera. In May, DOL suspended Cloudera’s PERM cases for 180 days after DOJ had already filed a complaint alleging Cloudera ran a sham recruitment process to keep qualified U.S. workers out. At least there was a public complaint describing the alleged misconduct. This time, the public explanation is heavy on accusations and light on specifics.

Freezing an employer’s cases while a real investigation runs can be a legitimate way to stop ongoing abuse. The government still owes the public an explanation of what it is investigating, how broad the freeze is and how it ends.

Microsoft and the Political Numbers Game

This storyline is older than the freeze. In July 2025, Breitbart paired 6,000 supposed H-1B applications with 9,000 Microsoft layoffs while admitting the application figure was anecdotal and unverified. Senator Jim Banks’s website later republished the argument to push H-1B restrictions. I can’t prove Breitbart wrote the White House’s talking points. I can say the talking points haven’t gotten more rigorous in fifteen months.

Vance says Microsoft laid off about 6,000 American workers last year while picking up 6,300 H-1B approvals. Microsoft’s May 2025 layoff round was reported as roughly 6,000 jobs worldwide, nearly 2,000 of them in Washington state. If the White House has a U.S.-only count, it hasn’t shared it.

Now the 6,300. The USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub export reviewed for this article lists 6,258 approvals in FY2025. Of those, 4,183, or 66.8%, were continuations, same-employer changes or amendments. About two-thirds concerned continuing employment or changes within Microsoft, rather than new-employment petitions. These count petition decisions, not unique workers. Calling all of them new hires is a neat trick with a very large number.

Microsoft says about 80% of its roughly 6,000 filings were for existing employees, and that new hires, all already in the United States, came to about 1% of its 121,000-person U.S. workforce. Those rounded figures are broadly consistent: 20% of 6,000 is about 1,200, roughly 1% of 121,000.

Why does Microsoft say 80% when those petition categories add up to 67%? One possible reason: USCIS can count an OPT employee switching to H-1B as “new employment,” even if she has been at the same desk doing the same job for two years. Calling her a replacement hire turns a change in immigration status into an imaginary change in staffing. That could help explain the difference, but it does not reconcile it. Filings and approvals are different measures and may cover different periods.

Microsoft’s own July 6, 2026 announcement described 4,800 job cuts worldwide. Stacking global layoffs against U.S. petition approvals from a different period proves nothing about replacement hiring. Layoffs also hit H-1B workers when a company kills a team or a project. “Americans replaced by foreigners” requires evidence about who lost their jobs, who replaced them and whether the work was comparable. A headcount won’t get you there.

Vance also claimed some foreign workers were paid tens of thousands of dollars less than Americans in similar jobs. If Microsoft paid H-1B workers below the required actual or prevailing wage, that is an LCA violation. DOL can test that with payroll records, accounting for experience, qualifications and other legitimate pay factors. Microsoft says it pays H-1B employees the same as everyone else doing comparable work. At equal compensation, employer-paid immigration fees and legal bills add cost. Strange way to save money. The government can get the payroll data. Let’s see it.

Layoffs Mean Different Things for H-1B and PERM

There’s no general H-1B rule that makes employers stop filing after layoffs. The nondisplacement rules apply to H-1B-dependent employers and certain willful violators, and even those employers can avoid them with LCAs covering only exempt workers: those paid at least $60,000 a year under the compensation rules or holding a related master’s degree or higher. Other wage and antidiscrimination obligations still apply.

PERM is stricter. Its layoff rule looks back six months before filing. If there were layoffs in the area of intended employment in the same or a related occupation, the employer has to notify and consider all potentially qualified laid-off U.S. workers and document the results. That leaves three paths:

1. Consider the laid-off workers. The case can go forward if potentially qualified workers were properly notified and considered, then declined, were unavailable or were rejected for lawful, job-related reasons. If a qualified, available U.S. worker wants the only opening, the employer cannot just choose the sponsored worker instead.

2. Wait out the lookback. Once the layoffs are more than six months old, they drop out of the analysis. Recruitment still has to be valid, and prevailing-wage timing may force a new determination. A company with rolling layoffs can end up waiting again and again.

3. Sponsor an unaffected job. Layoffs involving unrelated work or a different area don’t count. Cutting Xbox jobs may not touch an Azure role. But the org chart isn’t the legal test: the same or related duties in the same area count no matter which division they sit in.

Microsoft could have used any of these routes. Public totals can’t tell us which one, or whether it did. And there is no automatic companywide six-month ban.

If You Work at Microsoft or Adobe

As announced, the freeze covers PERM. Your H-1B status, and any I-140 already approved, are a separate matter. Where you stand depends on what is already on file.

Approved I-140. You’re in the strongest position. An approved I-140 can support three-year H-1B extensions past the six-year limit when the visa-backlog requirements are met; a new employer can request them too. Approval also generally lets you keep your priority date for a later petition. The separate 180-day rule protects the approval from automatic revocation solely because the employer withdraws it. Fraud, material approval errors or revocation or invalidation of the underlying labor certification can still undo those protections.

PERM filed at least 365 days before the requested extension begins. If a suspended case remains pending, it can support one-year H-1B extensions beyond the six-year limit. A final denial or revocation can end that basis for future extensions, but the decision is not final while an appeal is still available or pending. A denial does not by itself cancel an H-1B extension already granted.

Nothing filed yet. This is where it hurts. If your H-1B time is running short and your employer can’t get a PERM on file, you have every reason to find an employer that can while you still have runway. Changing employers doesn’t reset the six-year clock.

Fix the Rules Instead of Punishing the People Waiting

Congress has earned plenty of criticism for refusing to modernize the system. But DOL writes its own recruitment rules, and they still generally require two Sunday newspaper ads for professional PERM jobs, as if the next Azure architect is out there with coffee and a red pen, circling the classifieds. Posting on the employer’s own careers page, where applicants actually look, is optional. Maybe update the rulebook before acting shocked that employers follow it. Following the ad rules doesn’t excuse discrimination, and being annoyed with the rules isn’t evidence of fraud.

A long freeze could turn Microsoft’s best people into its competitors’ next hires. Workers with approved I-140s can generally leave and take their place in line with them, even if a new employer has to restart sponsorship. A policy sold as protecting American workers could push experienced engineers away from an American company, or out of the country altogether.

Families take a hit too, stuck depending on a single sponsor for longer. A processing pause doesn’t make recruitment in an already-filed case stale. A blocked future filing can.

Investigate real violations. Show the evidence. Use targeted remedies where they work. But making lawful employees wait longer for independence from their sponsors is a stupid way to address concerns about employer control. Washington wrote this system. Fix it.

Questions about a PERM case or your H-1B timeline? Explore our PERM and H-1B services, or schedule a consultation with Benjamin Hamilton.