The headline going round is that the U.S. has cancelled H-1B visas. It has not.
On 8 October 2026, Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that the Department of Labor had suspended eight employers from PERM, the labour certification that is the first step of most employment-based green cards: Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. The department will not accept new PERM applications from them and, by most reports, will not process the ones already pending. No end date and no route to reinstatement were announced.
Nobody's H-1B status was cancelled. Everyone working on an H-1B at those companies this morning still is. What has stopped is their path from H-1B to a green card.
Why a green-card freeze becomes an exit
An H-1B lasts six years. Past six, it can only be extended if the worker's green card process is already under way. Under the law known as AC21, that means a PERM application or immigrant petition filed at least a year earlier, or an approved petition stuck in the visa backlog.
So the freeze sorts these workers into two groups:
- Already past PERM, with a petition filed or approved. Their extensions likely still work, though how the suspension treats already-certified cases has not been spelled out.
- Not yet through PERM. For them the clock is now the problem. With no PERM possible at their employer, year six is a hard stop unless they change employer, and a new employer has to start the green card process from the beginning.
The second group is where pressure to leave the U.S. comes from. Sonderling said the eight employers have received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and more than 100,000 PERM certifications since 2009. That does not tell us how many people are in the second group today, and nobody has published that number. It does tell us these are among the largest sponsors in the program, not marginal ones.
The $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions is a separate fight. A federal judge in Massachusetts struck it down on 8 June. The President extended it to September 2027 by proclamation on 18 September, and a judge in California blocked enforcement again on 30 September. It affects who enters the H-1B system, not who is already in it.
What Canada actually offers them today
This is the part most coverage skips. Canada has announced a lot for H-1B holders and opened very little.
As of 10 October 2026:
- 2023 open work permit for H-1B holders: closed. 10,000 applications filled it within about two days in July 2023.
- Accelerated pathway promised in Budget 2025: not launched. No eligibility rules, launch date or cap published.
- Express Entry category for H-1B holders in STEM: proposed for 2027. IRCC asked about it in a consultation that closed on 1 September 2026. Not confirmed.
- Express Entry STEM rounds: none in 912 days. The last was 11 April 2024.
- General Express Entry rounds, open to all programs: none in 900 days. The last was 23 April 2024.
The last two decide things for a software developer on an H-1B with no Canadian work experience. Every Express Entry round of 2026 has gone to one of nine groups: Canadian Experience Class, French-language proficiency, healthcare, provincial nominees, trades, transport, the military, and physicians and senior managers who already have Canadian work experience. A U.S.-based tech worker without French fits none of them.
So the honest answer to "will this send a new class of immigrants to Canada?" is: the push is real, but nothing in Canada's system is catching it yet. If the eligible pool grows, it grows in the Express Entry pool, where these candidates wait for rounds that currently never go to them.
What would change that
Three things, in order of likelihood:
- IRCC launches the Budget 2025 pathway. The government has already committed to it in a budget. It would also be the fastest of the three, because it needs no new Express Entry category.
- The 2027 category list includes H-1B holders. IRCC has asked the question in public. The answer arrives with the 2027 categories, so not this year.
- STEM rounds come back. They exist on paper and have not been used since April 2024. If they return, they would reach this group without any new policy at all.
Until one of these happens, the routes that work for an H-1B holder today are the ones that already work for everyone: French, or a provincial nomination, which adds 600 points and has its own round every two weeks. Provinces score you on their own grids, separately from the federal CRS, and most of those grids reward a job offer or work experience in the province: Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan. A good score does not make you eligible, so check eligibility separately.
The number to watch
The next STEM round. It costs IRCC nothing new to hold one, and it is the clearest signal Canada could send that it wants this group. We track every round as it lands on the draws page.
Sources
The PERM suspension, the eight employers and the H-1B and PERM totals are as announced by the U.S. Department of Labor on 8 October 2026 and reported by Axios, Boundless and others. The $100,000 fee rulings are from the U.S. District Courts for Massachusetts (8 June 2026) and the Northern District of California (30 September 2026). The 2023 work permit, the Budget 2025 pathway and the 2027 consultation are from IRCC's own announcements and consultation documents as reported by Moving2Canada and CIC News. Every Express Entry figure is computed from IRCC's machine-readable rounds of invitations file. All of it was read on 2026-10-10, and a story moving this fast can change after that. Where an official source disagrees with this page, the source is right.
This page explains U.S. rules only so far as they explain the Canadian side. It is not U.S. or Canadian immigration advice. If you are on an H-1B at one of these employers, a U.S. immigration lawyer is the person to ask about your extension. Tell us if anything here is wrong and it gets fixed.