The Trump administration is blocking Microsoft and Adobe from giving foreign workers temporarily living and working in the United States a pathway to permanent residency, accusing the companies of fraud.
The two tech giants are the biggest names among a slate of others in the industry the Trump administration is cutting off from a program that allows companies to apply for green cards for foreign workers on H-1B visas, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced Thursday.
“We are cutting off the head of the snake,” Sonderling said alongside Vice President JD Vance. Vance and other Trump officials have alleged that the companies are using the government’s permanent labor certification program, known as PERM, as a way to hire cheaper labor at the expense of Americans.
Suspending Microsoft’s and Adobe’s access to PERM is an escalation of the Trump administration’s push to not only target illegal immigration but also significantly reduce pathways for legal immigration.
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“There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused the system more than Microsoft,” Vance said.
The suspended companies will now no longer be able to receive permanent labor certifications.
The majority, 80%, of Microsoft’s H-1B visa applications the past fiscal year were to extend or change the status of current employees, a spokesperson for the company said in a statement.
“Microsoft only files H-1B petitions for those who meet the rigorous standards of this visa category,” the spokesperson said. “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.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted the H-1B visa program by trying to make employers pay $100,000 fees, which federal judges have struck down.
So far this fiscal year, the Labor Department has issued 104,028 certifications for permanent workers, according to data from the department. The administration issued 138,093 the last fiscal year.
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