Vice President JD Vance said Thursday the Trump administration is freezing Microsoft, Adobe and IT outsourcers out of a green-card program over alleged visa abuse that undercuts American workers.
At a news conference, Vance and Labor Department officials announced that Microsoft, Adobe, and several large IT outsourcing firms would be barred from new or pending permanent labor certification applications. That certification, known as PERM, is the main federal step employers use to sponsor foreign workers for employment-based green cards.
Fox Business reported the move as part of a broader Trump administration crackdown on alleged H-1B and J-1 visa abuse. H-1B visas allow U.S. employers to hire skilled foreign workers in specialty occupations. J-1 visas cover exchange visitors, including certain academic and training programs. Officials cast both programs as tools that, in practice, have been used to sideline American labor.
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the department would refuse new filings and stop processing pending ones for the named companies. The list includes Microsoft and Adobe plus outsourcing giants Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini.
"We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies,"
Sonderling said. He pointed to long-running volume.
"Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers. They've received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications."
Sonderling called those numbers hundreds of thousands of jobs taken from American workers and described the suspensions as a first step to stop fraud and abuse.
Vance reserved his sharpest criticism for Microsoft. He said no company in the country had abused the system more.
"There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused the system more than Microsoft,"
Vance said. He tied last year’s workforce cuts to heavy use of temporary visas and green-card sponsorship.
He said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. In his framing, that worked out to roughly one and a half foreign replacements for every American let go.
"For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with 1½ foreign indentured servants,"
Vance said. He added that companies cannot lay off Americans and then replace them with foreign indentured servants, calling the practice a fundamental insult to the American worker and the American way of life.
Reuters reported the same core actions: the suspension of Microsoft, Adobe, and the named IT outsourcers from new or pending PERM applications, with Microsoft identified as a top filer and the 6,000-layoff figure paired with the H-1B and green-card counts Vance cited.
Vance’s message was not a call to wreck the company. He called Microsoft a great American firm with a strong relationship to the administration, then drew a hard line on hiring.
"Our message to Microsoft is, you're a great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers,"
he said. He argued visa programs meant to bring in the best and brightest had been twisted to undercut U.S. wages, and he urged Congress to reform the system while the administration used every tool available in the meantime.
Microsoft pushed back in a statement released after the announcement. The company said the vast majority of its U.S. employees are Americans and said it looks forward to giving the administration more information.
Of roughly 6,000 H-1B applications it filed in the last fiscal year, Microsoft said 80 percent were to extend or change the status of people already on its payroll, not to hire new workers. The remaining filings for new employees, it said, covered people already legally in the United States and equaled only 1 percent of its U.S. workforce. Those workers, the company stressed, were not new arrivals to the country.
Microsoft also said it files H-1B petitions only for candidates who meet the category’s standards, pays some of the highest compensation in tech, and pays H-1B employees the same as others doing comparable work. The firm framed its model as building a top global workforce by hiring Americans and attracting talent from abroad.
Adobe was also suspended. Fox Business said it sought comment from the company. No reply was quoted in the available reporting.
The green-card freeze was not the only enforcement signal. Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito announced what he called a historic investigation into alleged J-1 visa fraud at nine major universities. Subpoenas have already been served, he said, and investigations are underway.
The schools named include Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, UC Davis, Caltech, Arizona State, and MIT. D'Esposito said no institution would get a free pass because of a famous name on a building.
"Improperly using J-1 visa classifications to avoid employment obligations, exploit taxpayer-funded programs and undermine American workers will not be tolerated,"
he said.
Attorney General Todd Blanche warned that criminal cases could follow against companies or individuals found to have broken U.S. law. Specific charging theories were not detailed in the announcements.
The suspensions land inside a wider set of administration steps aimed at the same programs. Coverage around the news conference also referenced a proposed $100,000 fee on H-1B filings meant to deter abuse, and discussion of whether to end work permits for H-4 spouses of H-1B holders. Those items were described as under consideration or proposed, not as final rules with full text released in the same package.
Sonderling tied the PERM freeze directly to President Trump’s labor agenda, saying the administration is ending fraud that has fueled reliance on foreign labor. Vance invited both parties in Congress to fix the statute so the programs stop being used to defraud taxpayers and undercut wages, while promising interim executive action either way.
The practical effect for the named firms is immediate on the green-card track: no new permanent labor certifications accepted, and pending ones halted. That does not by itself cancel existing H-1B status, but it blocks a primary path from temporary skilled status to permanent residency through employer sponsorship. For the universities, the J-1 probes and subpoenas put exchange-visitor compliance under active federal scrutiny.
Officials framed the entire package as a defense of American workers who have watched layoffs arrive alongside heavy foreign-worker filings. Companies countered that their filings largely cover extensions, status changes, and a small share of already-present talent paid at high rates. The dispute is now locked in at the Labor Department, the inspector general’s office, and potentially the Justice Department if criminal referrals materialize.
American jobs are not a side issue in immigration policy. When large employers cut U.S. payrolls and keep the visa pipeline open, Washington finally treating that pattern as a problem is long overdue.