Vance announces suspension of Microsoft, other major tech firms from green card program

The Trump administration is suspending eight major tech companies, including Microsoft, from a program that allows employers to sponsor H-1B visa holders for green cards, citing suspected fraud and accusing the companies of undercutting American workers.

Vice President JD Vance announced Microsoft’s suspension at an Oct. 8 White House news conference, and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling added that the restrictions also apply to Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini. 

“Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers,” Sonderling said. “They’ve received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications. That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers.”

Vance singled out Microsoft, saying the company laid off about 6,000 American workers in 2025 while obtaining roughly 6,300 H-1B approvals and nearly 3,000 green cards. 

“For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one-and-a-half foreign indentured servants,” Vance said. “Now that is a scandalous system that we’ve allowed in this country for far too long.” 

He added that the administration’s “message to Microsoft is: You're a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers.”

Microsoft pushed back in an Oct. 8 statement, saying the vast majority of its U.S. employees are Americans. The company said about 80% of the approximately 6,000 H-1B applications it submitted during the last fiscal year sought extensions or changes in status for existing employees. 

Under the restrictions, the Labor Department will stop accepting new applications and processing pending ones from the eight companies under the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program, which employers use to help workers — including those on temporary H-1B visas — obtain green cards and remain in the U.S. permanently.

Vance said the administration could keep the PERM suspensions in place indefinitely, but its goal is to persuade the companies to change how they hire workers.

The suspensions come as the administration expands scrutiny of employment-based immigration programs. At the same event, Vance and Labor Department Inspector General Antony D’Esposito announced investigations into nine universities over allegations they misused an exchange visitor visa program to hire foreign researchers at lower wages than American workers. 

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