India's Foreign Ministry Calls Vance's Remarks 'Unwarranted' as PERM Suspension Reaches Day Two

Since the Labor Department announced on Thursday, Oct. 8, that it was suspending eight companies from the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program, the fight has moved from Washington to New Delhi and Bengaluru. The companies are Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini.

India pushes back on Vance

On Friday, Oct. 9, India's Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement on the suspension and on Vance's remarks. At Thursday's announcement, Vance said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. He concluded that the company replaced each laid-off worker with "one and a half foreign indentured servants."

The ministry said: "We believe that such descriptions are unwarranted and ignore the fact that Indian professionals in the United States are highly educated and skilled contributors to its economy and innovation ecosystem." It added that talent mobility adds value to both economies.

The ministry also drew a line between the two programs. "PERM is distinct from the H-1B visa programme," its statement said. The suspension "does not, by itself, affect the validity of existing H-1B visas or the status of H-1B visa holders and their dependents, though there could be some impact on the permanent-residency/Green Card process of eligible employees of the affected companies."

Many Indian nationals are in the system. NDTV Profit puts Indians at roughly 70% of H-1B holders.

What the suspension does

The Labor Department said it will stop accepting new PERM applications involving the eight companies and stop processing pending ones. NDTV Profit reports the department cited active federal investigations. PERM is generally the first step before an employer can sponsor a foreign worker for an employment-based green card.

Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the action was aimed at "the companies that have enabled this abuse for decades." U.S. officials said the eight companies have sought nearly three million foreign workers since 2009, received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and secured over 100,000 labor certifications. Vance and Attorney General Todd Blanche described the H-1B and J-1 programs as riddled with fraud. Those are allegations from officials. The companies have not been charged in anything described so far.

Indian industry voices: limited near-term hit

Mohandas Pai, a former Infosys CFO, said the headline is overstated. "The US has not suspended anybody from anything," he said in a video shared by news agency ANI. His reading is that the companies simply cannot sponsor or advance green card cases. He added that the employment-based queue already runs 10 to 15 years, so "it will not have any impact" immediately.

TCS said its hiring plans remain unchanged, according to India Today.

Nayar, writing on X, put numbers on the exposure. Indian IT firms accounted for fewer than 1,400 of the 117,849 PERM certifications issued last year, less than 2%. He argued the real effect could run the other way: "The US may accelerate the movement of American work to India." He pointed to architecture, product engineering, cybersecurity and AI implementation as areas where Indian teams could take on more.

Vembu: 'Come back, let's build India'

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu went further on X. "Indians have made a major contribution to America's technological prowess. Yet, a big part of America no longer wants us," he wrote, adding that visa holders face "the painful prospect of uprooting the life you have built with hard work." He ended: "Come back, let's build India."

It is not his first such appeal. Vembu published an open letter to Indians in America in April and made a similar call in September 2025, after the $100,000 surcharge on new visa applications was announced. He studied at Princeton and worked in the U.S. before founding Zoho in India.

In a reply to a user asking why India has seen so much brain drain, Vembu said Chinese, Taiwanese, South Korean and Japanese talent also migrated in large numbers during their countries' development.

The universities

Vance also named nine universities he said "merit an investigation" over J-1 visa use: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, Pittsburgh, UC Davis, Caltech, Arizona State and MIT. He said they use J-1 workers on federally funded grants at about 61%, against a 38% national average, and that American graduate researchers earn about $20,000 more than J-1 hires. He said "something weird is going on." No investigation of those schools has been formally announced.

What comes next

For employees at the eight companies, the immediate question is what happens to PERM cases now frozen mid-process. Whether the suspension is short or long-term, and what happens to the thousands of Indian professionals already in the green card queue, will determine whether Pai's "no immediate impact" reading or the MEA's warning of "some impact" proves closer to the mark.