Trump's foreign worker crackdown comes for Microsoft, Adobe, IT firms

Axios · 10/8/2026, 6:04:35 PM

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the Trump administration is suspending Microsoft , Adobe and several other IT firms' ability to hire foreign-born workers for permanent residency in the U.S. Why it matters: The move will affect hundreds of companies owned by the tech giant, escalating the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrant labor. What they're saying: " We want people to invest in the United States of America, particularly the American technology sector," Vance said during a Thursday news conference. "We're the biggest boosters of your industry. We want you to continue to grow and to employ a lot of people, but we want you to employ American workers." "And so our message to Microsoft is, you're a great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants." Zoom in: The permanent labor certification program , which is administered through the Department of Labor, allows a company to hire foreign workers to live permanently in America. It's typically the first step in receiving an employer-sponsored green card. It's also separate from H-1B visas, which allow workers to live and work temporarily in the U.S. H-1B visas primarily go to highly skilled workers in specialized occupations. Technology companies are among the program's biggest users. The Trump administration has made reducing the number of foreign workers in the country a rallying cry, and accused foreign-born workers of taking jobs that could — and, in its view, should — go to Americans. Driving the news: Vance specifically singled out Microsoft, slamming them for laying off 6,000 workers last year. Vance said Thursday that "[a]t the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. In other words, if you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants. Now that is a scandal