10/09/2026
Yesterday’s PERM suspension exposes something we have watched for years: the employer-sponsored visa system is fragile by design, and the person inside it carries the risk.
This morning the Department of Labor suspended several major technology employers and IT services providers from PERM labor certification. No new filings, no processing of pending cases, no end date. H-1B status, certified PERMs, and approved I-140s were not touched.
An employer-sponsored green card is a process the employer owns. It starts when the employer decides, stalls when the employer's standing changes, and ends if the job does.
Yesterday, it stalled for thousands of people at once.
Here is the counter-trend we see in our caseload every week. Top immigrant talent is leaving stalled corporate pipelines to build new technologies and create American jobs. They are moving their status to companies they founded and pursuing the O-1A and EB-1A, pathways that rest on their own record rather than on any employer's labor certification.
One reality check. The government says it wants foreign founders and welcomes truly extraordinary innovators. At the adjudication level, O-1 and EB-1 petitions from founders are being scrutinized harder than at any point in recent memory. Flawless legal architecture is now the price of entry. Founders who cannot get it will build in competing nations.
The structural fix already passed one chamber. A startup visa derived from the LIKE Act cleared the House in the America COMPETES Act of 2022, was dropped in conference, and the CHIPS and Science Act became law without it. Revive it, update it, reintroduce it.
Until then, extraordinary founders rely on volatile options to ask an antiquated system to recognize their value. Our job is to build those petitions so they hold.
If your path stalled yesterday, a merit-based path may be open to you. Our full perspective, including the two clocks every H-1B professional at these companies should calculate this week, will be released soon.
