Amazon & Google suspend US green card applications for immigrants amid layoffs

In a move prompted by recent layoffs in the tech industry, including those at Microsoft, Amazon and Google have suspended green card applications for immigrants in the US for the year 2024.

This move comes amidst intensifying competition, making conditions more challenging for foreign workers, as reported by the Daily Guardian. The suspension of green card applications may exacerbate the difficulties faced by overseas candidates seeking employment in the US, especially within the tech sector. Both Amazon and Google have temporarily halted PERM applications until next year.

PERM, overseen by the US Department of Labor, is a process for obtaining permanent labor certification. It ensures that admitting foreign workers does not adversely affect job opportunities, wages, or working conditions for US workers. PERM is often the first step towards obtaining a green card.

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Amazon announced internally earlier this year that it would pause all PERM filings through 2024, citing an inability to continue with the process, the Daily Guardian reported. Google also suspended its PERM applications earlier, in January 2023, and laid off 12,000 employees. The company informed employees that it would not resume the PERM process until the first quarter of 2025, it said.

Ava Benach, founding partner of Benach Collopy, a renowned immigration law firm in Washington DC, told the Daily Guardian that tech companies are following Google’s approach because to its “outsized influence here.”

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Collopy said “With more US workers available for open positions, the labor market test fails and so the process becomes a waste of time and money for these tech companies,”

“If tech companies have done layoffs relatively recently, they also have to notify laid off workers of new positions that may be going to foreign workers. If some of these people say ‘yes, I’m interested,’ then you’re out of luck with the green card application,” she told the Daily Guardian.