The United States has suspended major tech firms, including Microsoft and Adobe, from applying for a programme that gives their foreign workers the opportunity to work permanently in the country.

U.S. Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the decision on Thursday, accusing the tech firms of abusing the Permanent Labour Certification Program (PERM), which has so far been a legal pathway for workers to apply for green cards.

“I am hereby suspending from the Permanent Labour Certification Program some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini,” Mr Sonderling said.

According to him, the suspensions stemmed from ongoing federal investigations into the firms.

Vice President JD Vance noted that the PERM system required companies to advertise jobs in the U.S. before applying for green cards for foreign workers, given a lack of qualified American job applicants.

“They’ll put an advertisement in a small-town newspaper. They’ll go out there and say that ‘We have advertised for a position with our company, and nobody is responding to it.’ And they will use that lack of response to then go and replace American workers with what is effectively foreign indentured servants,” Mr Vance stated.

He added that no company in the U.S. had used this system more than Microsoft.

The development came hours before President Donald Trump was scheduled to award the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Meanwhile, Microsoft said it would provide the administration with additional information, insisting that the majority of its workers are Americans.

“We pay our employees some of the highest compensation in the tech sector, and our wages are among the highest of all H-1B filings,” the company said in a statement.