Microsoft suspended from US Green Card sponsorship programme as JD Vance alleges H-1B abuse. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the move at a press conference in Washington on October 8, and the Labor Department will now neither accept new PERM applications from Microsoft nor process the ones already pending. Sonderling said Microsoft was suspended “due to multiple active federal investigations.
“There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused the system more than Microsoft,” he said, claiming Microsoft laid off around 6,000 American workers last year while employing 6,300 people on H-1B visas and securing nearly 3,000 Green Cards. Officials argued that PERM is meant for roles needing “hyper-specialized” skills that are hard to find in the US, and accused Microsoft of misrepresenting its needs to replace American staff with cheaper foreign hires. Microsoft is the largest filer of PERM applications, according to Labor Department data, so the freeze puts a sizeable pipeline of employee Green Card cases on hold.
The US government has suspended Microsoft from the Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM), the process most employers must clear before sponsoring a foreign worker for a Green Card. Vance singled out the company as the worst offender. Microsoft has pushed back, saying the vast majority of its US employees are Americans. The suspension follows an investigation by an anti-fraud task force that Vance chairs. He also claimed that for every worker Microsoft laid off, it brought in “one and a half foreign indentured servants.