The Trump Administration Is Suspending Microsoft From a Green Card Program, Alleging Fraud

President Donald Trump’s administration announced Thursday it was suspending Microsoft and several other firms from a program allowing foreign workers to apply for green cards, as it also lashed out at universities that bring international students to the U.S. on exchange programs.

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Vance said the program from which Microsoft is being suspended requires companies to advertise jobs in America before applying to the Department of Labor to show they need to give a foreign worker a green card because of a lack of American workers.

“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. “There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has used this system more than Microsoft.”

Microsoft is No. 5 among U.S. employers when it comes to using H-1B visas, according data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Amazon is No. 1.

Vance said Microsoft last year laid off 6,000 American workers but also obtained 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards.

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Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Washington, said of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications it 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,” Microsoft said in a statement. “The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our U.S. workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country.”

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Besides Microsoft, Vance said the government was similarly suspending Adobe and tech consulting firms Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. The companies did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

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