Vice President JD Vance came out swinging Thursday against some of the biggest names in Big Tech, announcing alongside Labor Department officials that the Trump administration is suspending Microsoft, Adobe and others from a key employment-based green-card program.
The crackdown takes direct aim at major tech firms and outsourcing companies that the administration accuses of abusing the visa system. And according to officials, it is American workers who have been paying the price.
“There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused the system more than Microsoft,” Vance said at a news conference on H-1B and J-1 visa fraud.
The vice president did not mince words. He made clear the administration is going after companies he accused of using foreign workers to undercut U.S. wages and replace American employees.
Vance put Microsoft squarely in the crosshairs, laying out numbers he said tell the story.
According to Vance, Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year. At the same time, he said, the tech giant was benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards.
Vance blasted the arrangement as a “scandalous system.”
Then he went further.
“For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with 1½ foreign indentured servants,” Vance said.
It was a blunt charge from the vice president, and one that left little doubt about where the administration stands. In Vance’s telling, the issue is not abstract. It comes down to American workers losing their jobs while foreign workers fill the gap, and to companies benefiting from a visa system he says they have exploited.
Microsoft was not the only company caught up in Thursday’s announcement. Adobe was also named among the firms being suspended from the green-card program, and the administration said others are being suspended as well.
The move zeroes in on two groups in particular: major tech firms and outsourcing companies. Officials accused both of abusing the visa system at the expense of American workers.
At the heart of the administration’s case is a straightforward accusation. Vance argued that these companies have relied on foreign workers to drive down what Americans are paid and to push American employees out of their jobs entirely.
The suspension hits the targeted companies where it counts: access to a key employment-based green-card program. That program is now off the table for Microsoft, Adobe and the other firms named in the action.
Thursday’s news conference was centered on H-1B and J-1 visa fraud, and Vance used the platform to deliver a pointed message to some of the most powerful companies in the country. The administration, he signaled, is watching how these firms use the visa system, and it is prepared to act when it believes American workers are being shortchanged.
Labor Department officials joined Vance for the announcement, underscoring that the effort is a coordinated push by the administration.
For Vance, though, one company stood above the rest. By his account, no firm in the United States has abused the system more than Microsoft, and the administration is now making it pay for that.
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