White House targets tech giants with H-1B visa suspension
Vice President J.D. Vance speaking during an update on the federal investigation into the fraud and abuse of the H-1B visa program. Gettyimages.com/ALEX WROBLEWSKI / Contributor
By
Nick Wakeman
Vice President J.D. calls Microsoft the "biggest abuser" as the administration freezes new and pending H-1B and PERM applications for eight companies.
The Trump administration has barred multiple technology companies from hiring workers from outside the U.S. under the H-1B visa program.
At the top of the administration's list is Microsoft, which Vice President J.D. Vance called the "biggest abuser" of the program. Microsoft laid off 6,000 workers in 2015 while adding 6,300 people via the H-1B visa program and another 3,000 workers with Green Cards, Vance said at a White House briefing Thursday.
Other companies under suspension include Adobe, Cognizant, Tata, Wipro, Infosys, HCL and Capgemini.
“We are cutting off the head of the snake,” Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said in the briefing.
Vance said the administration’s fraud task force has launched multiple criminal investigations, but the abuse of the foreign worker programs is so severe that action could not wait.
The government will not process new or pending applications for H-1B visas and Permanent Labor Certification, or PERM, the Labor Department process that is typically the first step for an employer sponsoring a worker for a green card.
“H-1B is how they get in, and PERM program is how they stay,” Vance said.
The White House is claiming rampant fraud in the program that goes back decades.
“H-1B was meant to bring in the best of the best of foreign workers for positions that are impossible to fill with American workers,” Vance said.
Vance said companies will advertise for open positions and then claim no American workers applied, then "go and replace them with indentured servants."
Worker abuse has long been a complaint aimed at the H-1B program because the company, not the individual, holds the visa. That can make it difficult for someone to switch jobs or file complaints.
“They don’t come in with the same rights as an American citizen or American employee. They are being mistreated by their employers and are used to undercut the wages of American workers,” Vance said.
Many of the targeted companies are also federal contractors.
Microsoft is one of the government's largest software suppliers. Cognizant, Capgemini, Infosys, Tata, Wipro and HCL all perform federal IT services work directly or through U.S. subsidiaries.
It is not clear yet whether the suspension affects workers assigned to government contracts.
We have reached out to Microsoft and will update this story when they respond.