First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
The Trump administration froze green-card filings by Microsoft, Adobe and six major IT outsourcing firms on Thursday and opened investigations into nine elite universities, in the broadest strike yet against skilled-worker immigration programs in President Donald Trump's second term. Vice President JD Vance announced the move at a White House Fraud Task Force press conference inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, flanked by Attorney General Todd Blanche, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, White House aide Stephen Miller and other top officials.
The suspension covers Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini. "We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies," Sonderling said. PERM — the Labor Department's permanent labor certification — is the first step for employers sponsoring foreign workers for employment-based green cards, requiring companies to show no qualified American workers are available for the job. Sonderling said the firms had requested almost 3 million foreign workers since 2009, receiving over 230,000 H-1B approvals and more than 100,000 labor certifications.
Vance singled out Microsoft. "There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused the system more than Microsoft," he said, alleging the company laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. "If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants." His message to the company: "You're a great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers."
Microsoft pushed back, saying 80 percent of the roughly 6,000 H-1B applications it filed last fiscal year were extensions or status changes for people already working there, with the rest new hires already living in the US legally — "not new arrivals." The company said it pays H-1B employees the same as comparable workers, that its wages rank among the highest of all H-1B filings, and that the vast majority of its US employees are Americans. Blanche said the announcement "should send and does send a strong signal to every single employer in the United States that the Trump Administration will not tolerate discrimination against American workers."
The universities probe targets nine schools including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown and MIT over alleged misuse of J-1 exchange-visitor visas to undercut American wages — with Labor Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito saying subpoenas have already been served. The timing raised eyebrows: the announcement landed hours before Trump was scheduled to award Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The administration has not said how long the suspensions will last or what happens to applications already in progress.