Trump Admin Suspends Microsoft, Others From PERM Program Over Alleged Visa Abuse
JD Vance: “In other words, if you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants.”
Vice President JD Vance announced that the Trump administration has suspended numerous technology firms, including Microsoft, from the Program Electronic Review Management (PERM) Program.
The suspension does not cancel existing H-1B temporary work visas. The companies cannot file new or pending PERM applications.
Companies use the Department of Labor program to hire foreign workers, such as those holding an H-1B visa, to move to the United States and work there.
Vance’s anti-fraud task force accused Microsoft, Adobe, Capgemini, and other IT firms of abusing the visa system.
The companies have to prove two things to hire these foreign workers:
- Its primary purpose is to protect the U.S. labor market by requiring employers to establish there are “no able, qualified, and available U.S. workers who are willing to accept the permanent job offer.”
- Then, employers must demonstrate that hiring the foreign worker “will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers.”
Vance said Microsoft has abused the program more than others:
There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft. And let me just give you a couple of statistics on this. So, in the last year, Microsoft, and I want to be clear about the data here, so let me check this.
But Microsoft laid off last year 6000 American workers. At the same time, the company benefited from 6300 H-1b visas and almost 3000 green cards.
In other words, if you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants.
Now that is a scandalous system that we’ve allowed in this country for far too long, but thanks to the work of this task force and thanks to the empowerment of the President of the United States, we’re going to stop it because thanks to an ongoing investigation, we have decided to suspend the PERM program for Microsoft, which means they’ll no longer be able to take those H-1Bs and apply for permanent resident status within the United States of America.
Now, our message to Microsoft and to any other foreign or domestic corporation is quite simple. We obviously want you to thrive in the United States of America. We want people to invest in the United States of America, particularly the American technology sector. We are the biggest boosters of your industry. We want you to continue to grow and to employ a lot of people, but we want you to employ American workers.
And so our message to Microsoft is: you’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.
.@VP: "There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft."
Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers in 2025 after certifying that it could not find qualified American employees — yet the company was approved for more… https://t.co/xh4ZYUDobZ pic.twitter.com/HGOY63Xwkf
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 8, 2026
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling included Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini in the suspensions.
Sonderling claimed those IT firms “had since 2009 sought almost three million foreign workers, and had received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications.”
I know the suspensions target technology companies, but Amazon has the most H-1B approvals.
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Comments
Better late than never. I say, thank you.
Did the let go American workers have to train their replacements too?
I did once and didn’t know it at the time
https://x.com/TheBabylonBee/status/2092363890973868474
Long overdue. Bring the pain to the employers who misused the program, hiring cheap foreign labor to displace US Citizen workers. No more kid glove treatment, no more ‘golly we can’t be too hard on them’…Bump all that noise. Pain, humiliation, perp walks, seize the items used in ‘commission’ of the crime ..sorry that’s your entire Microsoft Campus but them’s the breaks. Stop being gentle b/c it hasn’t worked to deter their willful violations, instead deliver maximum enforcement.
Training your replacement for the job you are no longer “qualified” for.
BS on steroids.
So…how long before a #Resistance judge says that Micro$oft has the “right” to hire an unlimited number of H1B visa slaves (despite there being a limit set by Congress and Federal law).
Has Microsoft (and the others) filed for a TRO yet? No? Probably tomorrow then.
Judge Boasberg enters the chat.
The US has approximately 4% of the world‘s population yet produces at least 25% of the world‘s GDP.
Those extremely positive and long-standing percentages are a result of hiring Americans. Americans, who either grew up in the states or came here because they could get freedom here when they could not get freedom in their native cultures. .
I understand some ethnicities are quite good at technology. But that does not mean Americans are not good at technology. I find it difficult to believe that one and a half foreign people are needed to replace one American.
This has to stop. There is more to creating the kind of successful society we have than just a certain kind of brain power. Americans think differently than many cultures on earth. It’s that thinking, questioning how, why, even what that sets us apart. So many cultures are not allowed to question.
It’s a start
“I know the suspensions target technology companies, but Amazon has the most H-1B approvals.”
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To be a little more nuanced, 57% of Amazon’s profit comes from its Cloud services division, AWS, so the company at this point is fairly characterized as a technology company, more than a retail company.
All of us in the tech sector have heard about and seen this anti-American-worker BS for decades. There is another aspect to this, one that is quite real. Anybody that worked in a large tech company, or anybody that read the book “Snakes in Suits” knows that large organizations attract sociopaths and psychopaths like dung attracts flies. The mentally ill always go for the management positions.
Part of the reason non-citizens are hired is so the sociopath manager has another dimension of control and threat over the worker. Yes, the pay might be lower, an the abuse is worse, but also the push-back is less. Sociopaths *want* to hire dominate and push around. Such managers will accept lower quality workers … because they are driven to abuse others. They need more low-quality workers… and that is great because there are more employees to make miserable!
The federal government has plenty of similar managers and employees, but fewer of them are green card holders.