The White House has stopped Microsoft and seven other technology firms from hiring foreign workers through the permanent visa process. The decision came after Vice President JD Vance accused these companies of abusing the H-1B visa programme and the Permanent Labour Certification Program (PERM), which allows skilled international workers to become permanent US residents.
Vance singled out Microsoft on Thursday, saying the company had laid off about 6,000 American workers while filing 6,800 H-1B visa applications over the same period. He described this as evidence that Microsoft was replacing domestic workers with “foreign indentured servants.” The term refers to visa holders who must leave the US if they lose their sponsor, often within 60 days, a grace period the government recently proposed eliminating. Vance said, “You’re a great American company, you’ve got to hire great American workers. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”
Microsoft denied the allegations, stating that 80% of its H-1B filings last fiscal year were for employees already working at the company, not new hires. A spokeswoman said these workers receive the same pay as local staff. She added that “the vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans.” The median salary for an H-1B worker at Microsoft is $155,000, according to Ellis, a firm that assists tech companies with hiring international talent.
The White House expanded its criticism to include Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini. Secretary of Labour Keith Sonderling announced that the government would not process any new or pending PERM applications from these eight companies. Sonderling accused these firms and some US universities of acting as “visa mills” that flood the US with foreign workers.
The H-1B visa programme caps the number of new visas at 85,000 per year. It is designed for highly skilled or specialised workers that companies say they cannot find domestically. PERM is the next step for these workers to achieve lawful permanent residency, often through a Green Card.
Microsoft employs more than 200,000 people worldwide. Its chief executive, Satya Nadella, was at the White House on Thursday receiving the national medal of technology and innovation from President Donald Trump. Trump praised Nadella and other tech leaders including Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Lisa Su, Sergey Brin, and Michael Dell during the ceremony. Nadella and many recipients were also recently present at other White House events, such as a lunch on artificial intelligence and a state dinner for China’s President Xi Jinping.
Despite the accolades, Microsoft was the focus of Vance’s sharp rebuke. Vance claimed, “No company in the US has abused this system more than Microsoft.” None of the other major tech firms like Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple, or Nvidia were named in his remarks.
The PERM programme certified over 130,000 applications last fiscal year across ten business categories. The suspension of Microsoft and the seven other companies marks a rare move by the US government against some of the largest users of the H-1B visa.
The companies have been contacted for comment. Microsoft said it looks forward to providing more information to the administration. The dispute underscores ongoing tensions around the use of foreign skilled labour in the US tech industry.
According to Joy Online.
