Trump Admin Bars 8 Tech Companies From Sponsoring H-1b Workers For Green Cards

The Trump administration has barred Microsoft, Adobe and six IT companies from sponsoring H-1B workers for green cards, Vice President JD Vance announced Thursday.

Vance made the comments during a press conference on visa fraud, during which he argued Microsoft is discriminating against Americans by prioritizing foreign workers. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced later at the event that his department is also suspending Adobe from the program.

Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini will also be barred from the program, Sonderling said at the press conference.

“Our message to Microsoft is: You're a great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers,” Vance, who leads the administration’s anti-fraud task force, said at the press conference.

The announcement is the result of an administrationwide effort to crack down on alleged abuse of work visa systems. Vance on Thursday accused tech giant Microsoft of fraud, citing the company’s decision to eliminate thousands of workers earlier this year.

U.S. tech companies often rely on H-1B visas to hire foreign-born workers with specialized technical skills.

“For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one-and-a-half foreign indentured servants,” Vance said.

A spokesperson for Microsoft in a statement to POLITICO said the company would provide the Trump administration with further information about the immigration status of its employees: “Of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications we submitted in the last fiscal year, 80% were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees. These were not to hire new people.”

The spokesperson added that the company “only files H-1B petitions for those who meet the rigorous standards of this visa category” and H-1B visa holders are paid the same as other employees doing “comparable work.”

Spokespeople for Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Vance’s announcement comes on the same day President Donald Trump is expected to award Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation during a White House summit on “Science: A New Golden Age.”