White House bars Microsoft from foreign worker visa programme

The Trump administration singles out one of America’s most valuable companies in a sweeping crackdown on skilled immigration.

By MKT Reporter

The White House yesterday barred Microsoft and seven other technology companies from hiring skilled international workers through a permanent residency programme, with Vice President JD Vance accusing the firms of fraud and of replacing American workers with what he called “foreign indentured servants.”

Vance made the accusations at a White House conference where Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling announced that the US government would no longer process new or pending Permanent Labor Certification Program — known as PERM — applications from Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. The PERM programme is a principal pathway through which skilled foreign workers obtain Green Cards, allowing them to live and work in the United States indefinitely.

The move represents one of the most aggressive actions yet by the Trump administration against the H1b visa programme, a scheme capped at 85,000 visas annually that American technology companies have relied upon for decades to recruit highly specialised workers they say cannot be found domestically. Sonderling described firms such as Microsoft and American universities as “visa mills” that were “flooding” the country with foreign workers at the expense of domestic employees.

Vance was unsparing in his targeting of Microsoft specifically, a company valued among the most expensive in the world and one that employs more than 200,000 people globally. “No company in the US has abused this system more than Microsoft,” he said. His central argument rested on a comparison he drew between the company’s recent workforce decisions and its visa applications: Microsoft laid off approximately 6,000 workers while simultaneously filing 6,800 H1b visa applications over the same period, which Vance presented as direct evidence of foreign workers being used to undercut and replace American staff.

Microsoft pushed back firmly. A company spokeswoman told the BBC that 80 per cent of the H1b filings submitted during the last fiscal year related to employees already working at the company, not new recruits brought in from abroad. She added that international workers hired through the programme receive identical compensation to their American counterparts. “The vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans,” she said, adding that the company looked forward to providing the administration with additional information. According to Ellis, a firm that assists technology companies with international hiring, the median salary for an H1b worker at Microsoft stands at $155,000.

The timing of the announcement carried a particular edge. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella was present at the White House on the same day to receive a medal for technology innovation from President Donald Trump, who introduced Nadella warmly, saying the administration was “honoured” to award him the recognition and that it was “so well-deserved.” Other technology figures who received medals at the same event included Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Lisa Su, Sergey Brin and Michael Dell — none of whom featured in Vance’s criticism. Nadella and several of the other recipients had also attended recent White House events, including a lunch focused on artificial intelligence and a state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Vance clarified his use of the phrase “foreign indentured servants” by pointing to the structural vulnerability of H1b holders: should such a worker be dismissed by the company that sponsored their visa, they are legally required to leave the country. The Trump administration last month proposed eliminating the existing 60-day grace period that currently allows dismissed visa holders some time to find alternative employment before being required to depart.

The crackdown is conspicuous for who it excludes as much as for who it targets. Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple and Nvidia — all of which rely heavily on the H1b programme and hire thousands of international workers annually — were absent from Vance’s list of accused companies. Critics of the administration’s immigration policy have long argued that its stated concern for American workers is selectively applied, and yesterday’s announcement does little to dispel that reading.

For the technology sector more broadly, the action introduces fresh uncertainty into a hiring ecosystem that has depended on international talent for a generation. Whether the White House’s intervention survives legal challenge, or whether it signals the beginning of a broader restructuring of how America recruits skilled labour from abroad, remains to be seen — but for the thousands of workers whose futures hang on a visa approval, the answer cannot come quickly enough.

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