Does the US green card freeze affect H-1B visas? What the PERM suspension means for workers

No. The US action announced on October 8, 2026, does not itself cancel H-1B visas or require workers at the named companies to leave their jobs. It targets PERM, the Department of Labor labor-certification process that many employers use when sponsoring workers for employment-based green cards. For affected employees, the immediate concern is a delay to that green-card path, not an automatic loss of H-1B status.

Officials said the Labor Department will not accept new PERM applications from eight companies or process their applications already in the pipeline during the suspension. The companies are Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Cognizant, Microsoft, Adobe and Capgemini. The administration has raised allegations of misuse of foreign-worker programs; those allegations should not be treated as findings against every company or worker.

Why is PERM different from an H-1B visa?

An H-1B allows an eligible worker to hold a temporary US job under a separate petition filed with US Citizenship and Immigration Services. PERM is generally an earlier step in a different process: an employer seeks Labor Department certification for a permanent job before filing an employment-based immigrant petition. PERM approval is not itself a green card.

The distinction matters because the October 8 announcement concerned employers’ permanent labor-certification applications, not a blanket revocation of employees’ existing H-1B approvals. It did not announce a company-wide halt to H-1B petitions. An individual’s ability to keep working still depends on their own valid status, petition and employment circumstances.

What happens to pending PERM applications?

Applications already filed by the eight employers are on hold rather than being processed while the suspension remains in effect. A hold is not the same as an individual denial, but it can prevent the employer from completing the labor-certification step needed for many employment-based green-card cases. The administration has not given a fixed end date for the suspension.

Workers should establish which stage their case has reached. An employer preparing a PERM application cannot submit a new one during the suspension; an application already pending at the Labor Department will not move forward under the announced policy. A worker whose PERM was certified and whose employer has filed or obtained approval of Form I-140 is at a different stage. The announcement did not say that existing certifications, approved I-140 petitions or green cards were being automatically revoked.

For some H-1B workers approaching the usual six-year limit, the timing of a PERM application or immigrant petition can also matter to eligibility for an H-1B extension beyond that limit. A processing hold therefore may have consequences beyond a later green-card decision, even though it does not cancel current status. Those consequences depend on filing dates and the individual case.

Can affected workers change jobs?

Yes, the PERM suspension does not itself bar a worker from taking another job. An H-1B worker moving to a new employer generally needs that employer to file its own H-1B petition, supported by the required labor condition application. Eligible workers may be able to begin the new job once a properly filed petition is submitted, before it is approved. They should confirm that they meet the portability rules before making the move.

The green-card consequences are separate. PERM is tied to an employer’s offered job, so a worker changing employers while a PERM case is pending should not assume the new employer can take over that application. A new employer may need to begin its own sponsorship process. Workers with an approved I-140 may be able to retain its priority date for a later petition, while certain people whose adjustment-of-status application has been pending for at least 180 days may qualify for additional job-portability rules. Neither protection applies automatically to every case.

What should workers check now?

Ask the employer or its immigration team whether a PERM application was filed, whether it was certified, and whether an I-140 or adjustment-of-status application has been filed or approved. Keep track of H-1B and I-94 expiration dates, particularly if a job change or an extension is approaching. The answer to the immediate question remains clear: this is a suspension of a green-card labor-certification process at eight employers, not a cancellation of their workers’ H-1B visas. Its effect on any one worker’s longer-term plans depends on the stage of that worker’s case.