Vance says the US is suspending permanent visa residency program for Microsoft

The Trump administration is suspending Microsoft and Adobe from a federal program that companies use to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of ​Labor Keith Sonderling said Thursday during a press conference.

“If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” Vance said.

The announcement came just over a week after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sat two seats away from Vance at President Donald Trump's White House "Super Intelligence" luncheon, a gathering of tech executives focused on AI.

Microsoft wrote that roughly 80% of the about 6,000 H-1B visa applications it filed in the last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of existing employees, rather than to hire new people. It said the remaining applications were for people already legally in the US and amounted to 1% of its US workforce.

Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the administration was also suspending Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini from the program. The IT companies are among the largest users of PERM and other employment-based immigration pathways in the US.

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The announcement is the latest escalation for the administration against companies that rely on highly skilled foreign workers, particularly through the H-1B visa system. Microsoft is one of the biggest employers of H-1B workers in the US.

Correction: October 8, 2026 — An earlier version of this story misstated who announced Adobe's suspension. It was Secretary of ​Labor Keith Sonderling.