The Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a federal program that allows employers to sponsor foreign workers for green cards, Vice President JD Vance announced Thursday.
The administration accused the technology giant of abusing the immigration system and replacing American workers with foreign employees.
Speaking at an Oct. 8 White House news conference, Vance said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards.
“If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” Vance said.
The vice president argued that companies have increasingly exploited visa programs intended to bring highly skilled foreign workers into the country when qualified American workers are unavailable.
“There’s this pernicious idea that Americans are not good enough for the jobs in their own country,” Vance said.
The suspension affects the Department of Labor’s Permanent Labor Certification Program, also known as PERM.
Under the program, employers seeking to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency generally must demonstrate that hiring them will not displace qualified American workers or negatively affect domestic wages.
Microsoft is not the only company facing restrictions.
Vance also announced that Adobe would be suspended from the program.
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling identified six additional IT companies facing suspension: Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini.
Sonderling said the companies collectively submitted approximately 3 million foreign-worker requests since 2009. Those applications resulted in more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications.
He accused the companies of depriving American workers of employment opportunities.
However, Microsoft disputed Vance’s characterization of its hiring practices.
In a statement, Microsoft said approximately 80% of its 6,000 H-1B applications during the last fiscal year involved extending or changing the status of existing employees.
Microsoft said those applications did not represent new hires.
The company added that the remaining applications involved workers already legally residing in the United States. Those new employees represented just 1% of its American workforce.
The suspensions are part of a broader effort by the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force to investigate alleged abuses of federal immigration programs.
Federal officials also announced investigations into nine universities over suspected misuse of J-1 visas, which allow foreign nationals to participate in educational and cultural exchange programs.
The institutions include Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, MIT, Caltech, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California, Davis, and Arizona State University.
Anthony D’Esposito, the Labor Department’s inspector general, said investigators had already issued subpoenas as they examined potential violations.
The announcement came on the same day President Donald Trump awarded Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at a White House event recognizing achievements in science and technology.