The Trump administration has barred Microsoft from a key green-card program for H-1B workers after Vice President JD Vance accused the tech giant of replacing American employees with foreign labor.
Officials in Washington on Thursday blocked the Redmond, Wash.-based company from the pathway that lets foreign workers already here on H-1B visas apply for permanent residency, a move framed as defense of American white-collar jobs.
Vice President JD Vance tied the action to fraud concerns and told reporters Microsoft had laid off thousands of Americans while still pulling in large numbers of H-1B visas and green cards. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the administration would also suspend several other large IT firms from the Permanent Labor Certification program, or PERM, and stop handling their related applications.
PERM is the labor step many employers use before sponsoring foreign workers for green cards. Sonderling said the government will refuse new filings and will not process pending ones for the named companies.
“We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies,” Sonderling said.
"We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies,"
He listed Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Capgemini, and Adobe among the firms facing suspension alongside the Microsoft action.
Vance spoke as part of an announcement from his federal fraud task force. He put hard numbers on the charge against Microsoft and used blunt language about the workers who filled the gap.
He claimed the company laid off 6,000 American workers last year while receiving 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. He then boiled the ratio down for reporters.
“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.
"If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,"
He delivered a direct message to the company in the same appearance.
“Our message to Microsoft is: you’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants,” Vance said.
"Our message to Microsoft is: you’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants,"
Sonderling cast the crackdown as part of a wider effort. He said universities and companies had turned into “visa mills” and accused some foreign workers of lying about their qualifications to take jobs from Americans.
“It begins with universities and companies that have turned into visa mills, promoting foreign workers that have lied about their qualifications to take jobs from our beloved American workers,” Sonderling said.
"It begins with universities and companies that have turned into visa mills, promoting foreign workers that have lied about their qualifications to take jobs from our beloved American workers,"
He added a long-range figure for the group of firms in the crosshairs: since 2009, “just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers.”
Microsoft pushed back the same day. The company said the vast majority of its U.S.-based employees are American and argued its H-1B use is narrower than the political attack suggests.
In its Thursday statement, Microsoft said it submitted about 6,000 H-1B visa applications in the last fiscal year. Of those, 80% were to extend or change the status of people already on the payroll.
“The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our US workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country,” the company said.
"The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our US workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country,"
Microsoft also said it files H-1B petitions only for people who meet the category’s standards, pays some of the highest compensation in tech, and pays H-1B holders the same as other employees doing comparable work. It described its model as building a strong U.S. talent pipeline while still competing for global skill.
Reporting on the announcement noted it remains unclear why Microsoft was singled out beyond Vance’s hiring and layoff claims. The same account flagged that Lisa Monaco, a former deputy attorney general under President Joe Biden who oversaw the federal probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents, now serves as Microsoft’s president of global affairs and has long been a target of Trump’s criticism.
Sonderling presented the PERM suspensions as concrete leverage. By refusing new permanent labor certification applications and freezing pending ones for the named firms, the Labor Department can slow or stop a common route from temporary work status toward a green card.
The companies named beside Microsoft are heavy users of the H-1B and related systems that feed that pipeline. Sonderling’s “almost 3 million” request figure since 2009 was aimed at that pattern, not at a single hiring season.
Vance’s layoff-to-visa comparison, if accurate as he stated it, is the political core of the Microsoft case: American workers out, foreign temporary workers and green-card tracks in. Microsoft’s reply focuses on extensions, workers already lawfully present, and wage parity rather than on the raw headcount Vance used.
No injuries, arrests, or facility closures were described with the order. The immediate consequence is administrative: Microsoft loses access to the cited green-card pathway for H-1B holders, and the listed IT firms face a stop on new and pending PERM applications.
American workers watching white-collar layoffs do not need another lecture about “global talent.” They need employers that stop treating the H-1B and green-card track as a substitute bench when payrolls get cut.
