Vice President JD Vance announced on Thursday that Microsoft would be suspended from using a visa program that allowed foreign workers to permanently reside in the United States after an investigation found that the tech giant had “abused” the system.
Mr. Vance made the announcement in a news conference where he and other Trump administration officials made a slew of allegations that American companies and universities were committing visa fraud.
Mr. Vance took aim at the embattled H-1B visa program, which allows companies to hire skilled foreign workers in hard-to-fill jobs. The Trump administration has sought to overhaul the program, claiming that it has unfairly allowed companies to sideline Americans and hire foreign workers at lower pay.
Mr. Vance said on Thursday that companies like Microsoft have used the H-1B visa program to exploit the Labor Department’s permanent labor certification program, which allows H-1B visa recipients to obtain a green card and potentially stay in the United States indefinitely. He said the system was effectively enabling companies to hire “indentured servants” to replace American workers for a fraction of the cost.
“Now, there has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft,” Mr. Vance said.
Mr. Vance said that in the last year, the company had laid off 6,000 American workers, while it benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards.
“In other words, if you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” Mr. Vance said. “Now that is a scandalous system that we’ve allowed in this country for far too long.”
“And so our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” he added. “You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Keith Sonderling, the labor secretary, announced that Adobe would also be suspended from using the permanent labor certification program, as well as several large information technology outsourcing firms.
Anthony D’Esposito, the inspector general of the Labor Department, also announced that the agency was launching investigations into several universities for potential abuses of the J-1 visa, a cultural exchange program that allows foreign students to work and study in the United States. Among the nine schools are Harvard, Stanford, Arizona State and M.I.T.
“Subpoenas have been served, investigations are underway, and nobody will be getting a free pass because their name is carved into an expensive building,” he said.
Karen Weise contributed reporting from Seattle.
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