Trump admin cuts off Microsoft from major visa program, accuses tech giant of fraud and abuse | Latest Tech News
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration barred Microsoft Thursday from taking part in a program that permits overseas employees in the US on a H-1B visa to apply for a inexperienced card, with Vice President JD Vance accusing the tech giant of fraud.
“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 told reporters in the latest announcement from his federal fraud job drive.
Critics of the H-1B program — which allows employees with particular abilities legal employment in the US — say it’s overused, permits cheaper overseas employees to change American staff, and is rife with abuse.
Vice President JD Vance speaks alongside, from left, White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, US Attorney General Todd Blanche and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling during a press convention in Washington, DC on Oct. 8, 2026. AFP via Getty Images
Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling added that some of the biggest IT corporations in the world — including Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini, as nicely as Adobe — would also be suspended from the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program.
“We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies,” the newly confirmed secretary said. “Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers.”
The transfer is one of a sequence of actions meant to shield American white-collar employees, 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 claimed.
It’s unclear why the Trump administration is focusing on the Redmond, Wash., based company, but Vance accused Microsoft of being the most frequent hirer of overseas employees over American candidates.
President Trump presenting Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at the US Institute of Peace on Oct. 8, 2026. AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
The VP claimed the company laid off 6,000 American employees last 12 months while receiving 6,300 H-1B visas and virtually 3,000 inexperienced playing cards.
“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,” said Vance, declaring that abroad employees are subject to deportation if they lose their job.
In a assertion Thursday, Microsoft claimed that the “vast majority” of its US-based staff are American and added that “of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications we submitted in the last fiscal year, 80% were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees” moderately than to rent new ones.
Trump honored Nadella along with Dell Techologies CEO Michael Dell, AMD CEO Lisa Su, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, entrepreneur Sergey Brin AFP via Getty Images
“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. “Microsoft only recordsdata H-1B petitions for those who meet the rigorous requirements of this visa class. We pay our staff some of the best compensation in the tech sector, and our wages are among the best of all H-1B filings. We pay our H-1B staff the same as any other staff doing comparable work.
“Microsoft succeeds as a global technology leader by developing the world’s best technology workforce. We do this by strengthening this country’s talent pipeline, hiring American workers, and attracting the best talent from around the world.”
Notably, Lisa Monaco, a former deputy attorney common under Joe Biden and Microsoft’s current president of global affairs, is a longtime Trump goal, having overseen the federal investigation into Trump’s handling of labeled paperwork from his first time period.
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