Thousands of foreign technology workers hoping to secure US Green Cards through employer sponsorship are facing fresh uncertainty after the US Department of Labor suspended PERM filings by IT services giant Cognizant and software company Cloudera amid an investigation into alleged fraud and misuse of employment-based visa programmes. Department of Labor’s Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito announced the action on social media and also spoke about their investigation preceding the action on Texas journalist Sara Gonzales’s show. Calling it a huge deal, D’Esposito said American people will finally see that “we are for real”.Gonzales described Cognizant as a massive hirer of foreign labor and cited data that the company had 41,571 beneficiaries for H-1B approval only in Texas in 2025.There has been no official USCIS or DOL announcement to this effect. No details have been revealed yet and D’Esposito’s social media posts led to some confusion as he mentioned PERM filings and H-1B processings both which are very different from each other.
What is PERM and why does it matter?
PERM is the Department of Labor’s labour-certification process through which an employer generally has to demonstrate that there are no qualified and available US workers for a particular job and that employing a foreign worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed US workers.For a typical employer-sponsored EB-2 or EB-3 Green Card case, the process can broadly look like this:PERM → I-140 → priority date becomes current → Green CardThat means a worker who has not yet reached the PERM filing stage could face a delay in starting the Green Card process if the employer is unable to submit a new application.
Existing Green Card holders not believed to be impacted
The suspension of new PERM filings does not, by itself, mean that every existing Green Card case of these two companies has been cancelled.An employee who has not yet started PERM is likely to face a different situation from someone whose PERM has already been approved and whose I-140 has subsequently been filed or approved. Similarly, someone who already has a Green Card or another independently valid immigration status is not automatically affected simply because their employer is under investigation.
Is H-1B processing related to this?
The PERM suspension and an individual’s H-1B status are separate immigration matters. An investigation into an employer does not automatically cancel the H-1B status of every employee working for that company. The worker’s individual petition, status and circumstances remain important.While Cognizant is an Indian-American company, Cloudera is a fully American company.