IBM said it will stop sponsoring U.S. foreign worker visas and green cards for most roles in IBM Consulting, a shift that could touch a large share of the company’s biggest division. A company spokesperson said on Tuesday that IBM Consulting had opted to end sponsorship for most roles.
The move lands as IBM is being watched more closely for how it handles skilled hiring in the US. IBM Consulting employs more than 150,000 people out of IBM’s 264,300-strong global workforce, so the change reaches far beyond a narrow corner of the business. For readers tracking the company through stories such as IBM Stock Price Jumps 6% on Nvidia Vera Rubin AI Partner Role, the policy change is a reminder that the company’s growth story is now running alongside a quieter retrenchment in parts of its labor strategy.
IBM said its participation in U.S. high-skilled visa programmes has been declining for years, and the company tied the latest decision to changing labor and customer demands, saying skill availability and client needs have evolved. That puts the announcement in line with a broader shift at the company: IBM has become less reliant on H-1B visas in recent years, even as the consulting arm remains the core place where overseas hiring questions now matter most.
The timing also matters. The Trump administration announced a one-time $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions last year, and in October it said it was suspending a number of tech companies from a programme that allows H-1B workers to apply for green cards. The companies named in that move included Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Microsoft. In the same period, Satya Nadella received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from Donald Trump, underscoring how closely the visa debate has become tied to the technology sector’s relationship with the White House.
What IBM has not said is just as important as what it has. The company has not identified which Consulting roles, if any, will still qualify for sponsorship, leaving open whether the remaining exceptions are limited to highly specialized positions or a broader set of jobs. That gap will determine how much of the unit’s hiring pipeline is still open to foreign workers and how quickly the policy changes the makeup of IBM’s largest division.
The numbers suggest the company had already been moving in this direction. Only 1,611 H-1B petitions were approved for IBM in fiscal year 2026, according to data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services. For a company of IBM’s size, that figure points to a sponsorship model that had already been narrowing before Tuesday’s decision made the cut explicit.
Readers following IBM through the market side, including coverage such as Ibm Stock jumps nearly 8% after Barclays starts coverage at $350 and Ibm Stock Price Climbs as IBM Posts 6% Revenue Growth and Higher Cash Flow, may see the same pattern from a different angle: IBM is still leaning into business demand where it sees it, but it is also trimming one of the channels that once fed its workforce. The open question now is whether the remaining sponsored roles in IBM Consulting are enough to matter, or whether this is the moment the company fully redraws how it staffs its largest business.
