Washington: The US Department of Labour suspended India-founded and US-listed tech giant Cognizant’s ability to file for green card sponsorship on Tuesday, amid an investigation into visa fraud.
D’Esposito announced that the company’s PERM filings had been suspended. Technology firm Cloudera also faced a suspension of its PERM filings. This refers to the labour certification process that US employers must complete before sponsoring a foreign worker for an employment based green card. Under this process, the US Department of Labour sets a minimum wage that the job must pay, following which the sponsoring firm must advertise domestically for interested applicants to fill the job. Once a mandatory waiting period is concluded, the firm can proceed with the hiring process. Acquiring the PERM certification is typically the first step in securing an employment-based green card for a foreign worker. This places it sixth overall in the US, behind Amazon, TCS, Infosys, Apple and Microsoft .
Cognizant , which was founded in Chennai in 1994 and is now headquartered in the United States, is typically one of the largest petitioners for H-1B visas in corporate America. Cognizant has received 3,510 approved H-1B visa petitions thus far in 2026, according to figures provided by US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
“Threats to American workers will NOT be tolerated,” said the Labour Department’s Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito in a post on X.
The Trump administration has made combating visa abuse a key policy priority and launched “Project Firewall,” an aggressive enforcement initiative targeting employers who abuse the H-1B visa programme, in September last year.
