WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
  • The Trump administration suspended eight technology companies from the Labor Department’s PERM green card sponsorship program.
  • Vance accused Microsoft of replacing 6,000 dismissed workers with foreign hires after the company received 6,258 H-1B approvals.
  • Two out of three Microsoft H-1B approvals involved people already working at the company.
  • Amazon and Meta led the nation in H-1B approvals but were not suspended from PERM.

DISCLAIMER: GoldInvestors.news is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or broker/dealer. All investment/financial opinions expressed by GoldInvestors.news are from the personal research and experience of the owner of the site and are intended as educational material. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur.

The Trump administration suspended eight technology companies from sponsoring foreign workers for green cards on Thursday, while Vice President JD Vance singled out Microsoft over its hiring practices. Vance accused the company of replacing workers dismissed in 2025 with employees holding H-1B visas.

The administration suspended the companies from the Labor Department’s PERM program, which allows employers to sponsor foreign workers for green cards. Green cards grant permanent residency, while H-1B visas are temporary work permits and are not affected by the suspension.

Microsoft laid off 6,000 workers in 2025 and received 6,258 H-1B approvals during fiscal 2025, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services H-1B Employer Data Hub. Those figures formed the basis of Vance’s criticism.

“If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants. ... Microsoft is a great American company, and we have a great relationship with them,” Vance said.

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The approval data, however, complicates a direct comparison between the layoffs and Microsoft’s foreign worker approvals. Two out of every three H-1B approvals awarded to Microsoft involved people who were already working at the company.

That means the company’s total approvals did not exclusively represent foreign workers newly joining Microsoft. The distinction is important because the overall approval figure alone does not show that each approved worker replaced someone who had been dismissed.

Microsoft ranked third among H-1B sponsors in fiscal 2025, with 6,258 approvals. Amazon ranked first with 19,178 approvals, while Meta finished second with 6,294.

Neither Amazon nor Meta was suspended from the PERM program. Amazon brought in nearly four times as many H-1B workers who were new to the company as Microsoft did, according to the visa data cited in the source.

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Microsoft had secured more H-1B approvals than Amazon for years, but Amazon moved ahead in 2017. Amazon now receives about three times as many approvals as Microsoft.

All eight companies suspended from the PERM program were among the nation’s 50 largest H-1B sponsors. Most of the suspended businesses are information technology services and consulting firms.

Adobe was the smallest H-1B sponsor among the eight suspended companies, ranking No. 45 nationally. The administration also suspended Microsoft, Adobe and six information technology services firms from participating in PERM.

The administration’s action extended beyond the technology sector and the PERM program. At the same Thursday news conference, Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito announced an investigation into alleged J-1 visa fraud involving nine major American universities.

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Supporters of President Donald Trump have long argued that foreign worker programs undercut American employees by giving companies incentives to hire workers from abroad. Thursday’s announcements placed both corporate sponsorship practices and university visa programs under renewed federal scrutiny.

The available H-1B figures offer support for part of Vance’s case because Microsoft did receive more than 6,000 approvals during the same year it laid off 6,000 workers. Yet the data also shows that most of Microsoft’s approvals went to existing employees rather than people newly hired by the company.

The numbers also highlight a notable difference in the administration’s enforcement list. Amazon and Meta were the two largest H-1B sponsors, and Amazon added substantially more new H-1B workers than Microsoft, but neither company was among those suspended from PERM.

DISCLAIMER: GoldInvestors.news is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or broker/dealer. All investment/financial opinions expressed by GoldInvestors.news are from the personal research and experience of the owner of the site and are intended as educational material. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur.