Permanent Labor Certification

So why has the US government taken this decision, and what does it mean for Indian IT employees? To understand this, my colleague, Shashank Bhargava, speaks to The Indian Express' Somendra Barik.

Somendra, before we talk about why this has been done, can you tell us how exactly does the Permanent Labor Certification Program work?

So the Permanent Labor Certification Program, which is more commonly referred to as PERM, that which is P-E-R-M, it's basically a very important part of the process through which American employers, that's important, through which American employers sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency, what is more commonly known as a green card, to work and stay in the United States, right? So, uh, we've all, of course, known people who are in the US, "" So a lot of them would have gone via this PERM route essentially, right?

Yeah, and this is a big aspiration for a lot of people.

For sure.

And once these requirements are met, then the employer sort of submits a labor certification application to the US Department of Labor, and then it's upon this Department of Labor to approve.

And if you approve this particular application, then the employer can file an immigrant petition with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is more commonly known as USCIS.

And, you know, I think one thing which we have to understand, uh, just to sort of separate it a little bit, is that there is a bit of a distinction between a PERM certification and a green card itself, right? Like, a PERM certification itself does not guarantee you or grant you a green card.

You will be still be standing on EB-2 line.

The main benefit is that you will not go through the PERM process to get your I-140.

So if you can...

There are certain-- USCIS identifies certain areas of interest every year, and they publish a small article where they say, "These are the critical fields we need people in." Okay.

It's indentured servitude.

So he talked about a lot of these companies, but one of the big ones is they're suspending Microsoft's ability to use the PERM program for foreign workers because they got caught red-handed like we just talked about.

I mean, this was, this was big news a few weeks ago.

They laid off thousands of Americans.

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And then they hired thousands of foreigners

Decided to suspend the PERM program for Microsoft, which means they will no longer be able to apply, uh, their, tho- they'll nev- no longer be able to take those H-1Bs and apply for permanent resident status within the United States of America.

Now, our message to Microsoft and to any other foreign or domestic corporation is quite simple.

The way this system fundamentally works, the H-1B visa is how the people get into the United States in the first place.

And then a PERM program... is how those employees stay.

So after a couple of cycles of H-1B reapplication, the companies will then apply for a PERM, a P-E-R-M, which will allow the employee to stay, get a green card, and potentially stay in the United States indefinitely.

So if the H-1B visa is how people come into the country, the PERM program is how they stay in the united states to begin with now there has been no company in the united states unfortunately that has abused this system more than microsoft and let me just give you a couple of statistics on this so in the last year microsoft and i want to be clear about the data here so let me check this but Microsoft laid off last year 6,000, 6,000 American workers.

At the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards.

In other words, if you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half million.

Now, that is a scandalous system that we've allowed in this country for far too long.

But thanks to the work of this task force and thanks to the empowerment of the President of the United States, we're going to stop it.

What the task force and its partners in law enforcement have uncovered is systemic immigration fraud that violates the laws and statutes of the United States to undercut American workers and labor.

The H-1B program and the PERM program that's attached to it have explicit statutory commands that must be followed.

It requires individuals, for example, to have a unique, highly specialized occupation, as one example, and yet in case after case after case, we see individuals that are being brought into the country for skills that are not specialized, that are not unique, and that are not skilled, and that are doing work that is currently being done by American workers, but at vastly lower pay.

He-- Where's the lie? Where's the lie? The fraud that's been exposed does need to be highlighted.

We're happy to be joined by Steve Rao, our good friend, former Morrisville town councilman.

Last week, the Trump administration suspended Microsoft, Adobe, and major IT outsourcing firms from the Permanent Labor Certification program, which is a key green card sponsorship program, amid federal investigations into alleged visa fraud.

And Steve Rao is joining us now.

Steve, how are you?