Indian billionaire Sridhar Vembu urges Indians in the US to “come back” after green card freeze

Indian billionaire Sridhar Vembu, the founder of software maker Zoho, has called on Indian professionals in the United States to return home after the Trump administration froze green card sponsorships at eight large employers, among them India’s biggest information technology companies.

“Indians have made a major contribution to America’s technological prowess,” Vembu wrote on X on Thursday. “Yet, a big part of America no longer wants us.”

“Indians who are on a visa in the US face the painful prospect of uprooting the life you have built with hard work,” he added. “Let this be the birth pains of a bold new future. Come back, let’s build India.”

His post came a day after the US Department of Labor suspended Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech, Cognizant, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe from the Permanent Labor Certification program, known as PERM. The program is the first step in the employer-sponsored green card process. Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the move at a press conference on Wednesday.

“We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certifications involving these companies,” Sonderling said. He told CNBC that “since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers.” Over the same period, he said, the eight companies received more than 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications.

The administration says some employers used the programs to replace American workers with lower-paid foreign staff and to hold down wages, often while cutting jobs. Vance singled out Microsoft over the roughly 6,000 layoffs it made in 2025. “It’s time these jobs that were stolen from American workers finally go to Americans,” he wrote on X.

Microsoft said most of its US employees are American citizens and that H-1B holders make up about 1% of its US workforce. It said 80% of the roughly 6,000 H-1B applications it filed last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of existing employees. “They are not new arrivals to our country,” the company said.

The suspension does not cancel existing H-1B visas, and the companies can still employ visa holders. It does freeze the path to permanent residency for workers whose employers can no longer file or advance PERM applications, a group that includes thousands of Indian engineers. The department has not said how long the suspension will last.

Nasscom, the Indian technology industry body, said immigration and skilled talent mobility are “two distinct issues.” It added that Indian technology companies “have significantly reduced their dependence on H-1B visas” in recent years.

This is not the first time Vembu has made the appeal. In May, after earlier changes to the US green card process, he wrote: “Once again, my appeal to Indians in America on a visa. Please come home. Even if you feel it is hardship and sacrifice, self-respect should dictate your course. Let’s make Bharat proud.” In a follow-up post this week, he argued that the return of talent from abroad has been a normal part of the rise of economies such as China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

Vembu has lived by that argument himself. He holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from Princeton University and began his career at Qualcomm in the US. In 1996 he founded AdventNet with his siblings and friends, and the company was renamed Zoho in 2009. In 2019 he moved to Tenkasi, a rural district in Tamil Nadu, where Zoho has set up offices. He stepped down as chief executive in January 2025 and now serves as the company’s chief scientist.

Zoho, which sells cloud-based business software to clients including Netflix, L’Oréal and PayPal, remains privately held. Vembu and his siblings own a majority stake. Forbes estimates the family’s net worth at $5.8 billion and ranks them 46th on its 2026 list of India’s richest people.