Trump administration suspends Microsoft from green card program. JD Vance says it must ‘hire great American workers’

Microsoft is facing a new challenge from Donald Trump‘s administration. Federal officials suspended the tech giant from the PERM program as Republicans have been upset that such programs undercut American jobs. It helps companies secure green cards for foreign workers who can then work and live using H-1B visas, as reported by NBC News.

“They will no longer be able to take those H-1Bs and apply for permanent resident status within the United States of America,” said JD Vance in a post on his X account. The move comes after Trump’s immigration policies are already hurting several companies and factories. Vance said that the program from which Microsoft is being suspended requires companies to advertise open positions in America before anything else.

“They’ll put an advertisement in a small-town newspaper. They’ll go out there and say that ‘We have advertised for a position with our company, and nobody is responding to it.’ And they will use that lack of response to then go and replace American workers with what is effectively foreign indentured servants,” Vance said. He also added that no other company in the U.S. has used this program more than Microsoft.

There are apparently fewer jobs for Americans

Vance pointed out to the Microsoft’s recent layoffs and visa figures. He said the company laid off 6,000 American workers last year while obtaining 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards.

“If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” he said. He then sent a direct message to Microsoft saying,  “You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” hinting toward the ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign.

Following this, the company defended itself in a statement, “The vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans.” It added that, “We look forward to providing the Administration with additional information.” The company also pointed out that 80% of the 6,000 H-1B visa applications it submitted in the last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees, not to hire new personnel.

Vance also claimed that H-1B workers earn less than Americans working in the same position. The company addressed it in the following words: “We pay our employees some of the highest compensation in the tech sector, and our wages are among the highest of all H-1B filings. We pay our H-1B employees the same as any other employees doing comparable work.”

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