In its latest quarterly earnings disclosure, HCLTech indicated that the suspension of the US permanent labour certification programme — commonly known as PERM — was unlikely to weigh heavily on its headcount. The firm disclosed that its PERM filings have been relatively few over recent years.
At a press conference tied to its second-quarter FY27 earnings, Ram Sundarajan, who heads human resources, was quoted by a broadcast outlet as stating that the company would comply with any Department of Labor directives and respond to whatever questions the agency puts forward. Sundarajan further indicated that domestic recruiting had been scaled up over an extended period to develop a substantial pool of locally hired talent, an approach the company intends to continue.
H-1B visa applications at the firm have held relatively steady across roughly five or six consecutive quarters, a pattern the company attributed to its ongoing effort to grow a domestic workforce within the United States.
Kotak Institutional Equities, in a published research note, assessed that the US move to halt new and pending labour certification filings tied to six of India's prominent IT firms would leave their day-to-day operations and financial performance broadly unaffected, with the brokerage stating that neither service delivery nor earnings were expected to see any meaningful disruption.
According to the document, several IT firms based in India have been redirecting their workforce approaches toward recruiting talent from within the United States.
Workers holding H-1B status past the standard six-year threshold rely on approved PERM applications or I-140 petitions to qualify for those additional years — a pathway that the pause in processing would put at risk for affected staff. Workers holding I-140 petitions that have already cleared the approval process stand to see little disruption to their current standing.
Known as PERM, the labour certification pathway that underpins many employer-sponsored green card petitions in the United States places several obligations on hiring companies: they are required to establish the prevailing wage for the role, carry out a structured recruitment effort, and demonstrate that no adequately qualified domestic workers are available to fill the position on a permanent basis. Once PERM certification has been granted, the next procedural step allows a sponsoring employer to submit an I-140 immigrant petition directly to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Obtaining PERM certification, on its own, neither grants the right to work nor secures lawful permanent residency.
Kotak noted that exposure for Indian IT firms would become more pronounced should US immigration curbs be broadened to cover existing work permits, the placement of staff at client sites, or outsourcing contracts, with the bank's analysts stating in their assessment that a truly consequential level of risk would materialise only under those expanded conditions. According to the document, that particular standard was not met by the provision under review.
