Vice President JD Vance announced the Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a program that lets companies seek green cards for H-1B workers, citing fraud.
Vance delivered the news at a White House news conference in Washington, one day after the Department of Homeland Security moved on a separate crackdown aimed at foreign student work programs. Breitbart reported the administration is cutting the tech giant off from the green-card application track used for workers who enter on H-1B visas.
The White House framed the suspension as a direct response to alleged fraud by Microsoft. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
H-1B visas have long drawn fire from Trump allies who say the program undercuts American workers and is packed with abuse. Nearly three-quarters of H-1B approvals have gone to workers from India, according to the same reporting.
Vance did not soft-pedal the charge. He cast the company’s workforce moves as a swap that leaves U.S. employees on the losing end.
At the White House, the vice president said:
"If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,"
That line put a hard edge on a familiar conservative complaint: big tech talks about talent shortages while shedding American staff and leaning on visa pipelines. The administration is now treating Microsoft’s conduct as fraud serious enough to block the firm from the green-card program tied to those H-1B hires.
The Microsoft action did not arrive alone. On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security proposed a $70,000 fee for international students seeking to work in the United States.
Under the proposed rule, schools would have to pay that fee for every student who takes part in Optional Practical Training, the program that lets foreign graduates work here after their studies. The sequence was plain: DHS floated the steep OPT fee on Wednesday, and Vance announced the Microsoft suspension a day later.
Together, the steps signal a wider push against what the administration sees as easy on-ramps from student status and temporary work visas into longer stays, and against employers it says game the system.
Trump’s team has treated H-1B as a core labor issue, not a side debate. Supporters argue the visa lets firms import cheaper, dependent labor while U.S. workers get pink slips. Vance’s “indentured servants” phrasing drove that point home in public.
Microsoft now sits under an official fraud accusation and a suspension from the green-card program used for its H-1B workforce. Open questions remain about the full evidence file, the exact legal mechanism of the suspension, and how long the ban lasts. Those details were not laid out in the initial account.
What was laid out is the administration’s posture: major employers that displace Americans and lean on foreign visa labor will face consequences, not another round of polite warnings.
Tech giants built fortunes on American markets and American infrastructure. They can hire American workers first, or explain the fraud claims in daylight.
