Vance announces Microsoft, Adobe barred from H-1B green card process

Immigration groups dispute rationale, cite global talent competition

Vice President JD Vance announced Thursday that the US Department of Labor has suspended Microsoft and Adobe from applying for permanent residency for workers employed through the H-1B visa program, accusing the tech companies of replacing laid-off American workers with foreign “indentured servants.”

Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling confirmed the action in a statement, saying the department “will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies.” Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to the Guardian, which first reported Vance’s announcement.

At a press conference, Vance framed the suspension as a response to what he characterized as systematic abuse of the H-1B program by major employers. “Our message to Microsoft is, you’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” Vance said. “You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”

The vice president cited Microsoft’s 2026 H-1B filings — nearly 3,700 petitions — as evidence. The figure makes Microsoft the fifth-largest US employer of H-1B workers this year, according to data Vance cited; Amazon topped the list with more than 9,300 petitions. Sonderling said that since 2009, Microsoft and Adobe have together received approximately 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and 100,000 “permanent labor certifications,” the latter being a step toward an employment-based green card.

Vance drew a direct link between the companies’ permanent-labor-certification activity and their domestic layoffs. “If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one-and-a-half foreign indentured servants,” Vance said. He argued the program as a whole functions as a wage-suppression mechanism, claiming that “on average, workers hired through the H-1B program are making $20,000 less than US workers in the same position.”

“So I’m sure that everybody here understands the game that is being played,” Vance said. “You bring in indentured servants from outside the country, you lay off American workers and, if you’re a corporation, you make a ton of money by undercutting the wages of American workers, replacing them with people who, frankly, shouldn’t be in the United States of America to begin with.”

Immigration advocacy organizations have long called for reforms to the H-1B program, though for reasons that diverge from the administration’s stated concerns. The National Immigration Forum and other groups have argued that H-1B workers are often beholden to their employer because their visas are tied to the company that sponsored them, making it difficult to switch jobs or seek higher pay. In a September 2026 blog post discussing proposed changes to the program, the National Immigration Forum wrote that “the United States has long benefited from its ability to attract talent from around the world, particularly in STEM, higher education, research, and innovation.”

“As countries increasingly compete for highly skilled workers, policies that make the United States less attractive could strengthen global competitors,” the group wrote.

The H-1B program allows US employers to temporarily hire foreign workers in specialty occupations, with workers able to apply for permanent residency while remaining in their jobs. Tech companies are the largest employers of H-1B workers across the industry, according to the data Vance cited Thursday.