JD Vance just put one of America’s biggest technology companies on notice: being successful does not earn you a free pass on American jobs.

The Trump administration announced Thursday that Microsoft is being suspended from the federal labor-certification program companies use to sponsor workers for employment-based green cards.

Adobe and six major IT outsourcing firms are also caught in the crackdown.

This is a concrete restriction on the companies’ access to the immigration system, and Vance made clear that he wants a change in hiring practices.

Watch his announcement:

The administration puts American workers at the center

ADVERTISEMENT

As RealClearPolitics reports, Vance connected the suspension to an ongoing investigation and accused companies of making improper representations when seeking access to foreign-worker programs.

Pressed by a reporter to explain the alleged fraud, he argued that businesses cannot legitimately claim they need specialized foreign talent while using the system to replace Americans and drive down wages.

He also said the administration wants the technology industry to succeed and keep investing in the United States. His demand is that American workers benefit from that success, rather than being treated as an expense to eliminate.

That is an important distinction for a company with Microsoft’s influence: support for American technology does not have to mean accepting every hiring practice without scrutiny.

A famous logo should not buy a company an exemption from the rules everyone else has to follow.

Vance cited Microsoft’s layoffs and visa figures in laying out his accusation. Microsoft has since disputed the implication that its applications represented thousands of new foreign hires; its response is below.

Eight companies, and a freeze on pending applications

The Lynnwood Times reports that the suspension covers Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini.

Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the department would stop accepting new permanent labor-certification applications from the named companies and stop processing their pending applications. He cited active federal investigations in announcing the action against Microsoft and Adobe.

ADVERTISEMENT

For businesses that rely on sponsoring workers for permanent residency, that reaches beyond future recruiting plans. It puts an immediate obstacle in front of applications already moving through the system.

The freeze concerns the labor-certification process; it does not automatically cancel existing H-1B visas or mean that every foreign employee at these companies must leave the country. Keeping those distinctions straight matters when an announcement affects real employees and their families.

Here is Sonderling identifying the companies and explaining the action:

What this program is supposed to do

The Department of Labor explains that permanent labor certification, commonly called PERM, is a step most employers must complete before submitting an employment-based immigration petition to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Labor must determine that enough qualified, willing and available U.S. workers cannot be found for the particular job in the relevant area. It must also determine that hiring the foreign worker will not harm the wages and working conditions of comparable American workers.

In plain English, protecting American workers is already part of the program’s purpose. It is not an extra condition Vance invented at a press conference.

That is why the hiring records matter so much here: the central question is whether the companies met those requirements in the actual jobs and applications under review.

Americans who have lost work deserve more than a corporate slogan about talent shortages. They deserve to know whether they received a genuine chance at the jobs in question.

ADVERTISEMENT

Microsoft pushes back on the numbers

In its Thursday statement, Microsoft said about 80% of the approximately 6,000 H-1B applications it submitted in the last fiscal year involved extending or changing the status of people it already employed.

The company said the remaining applications for new employees concerned people already legally in the United States, and that those hires equaled about 1% of its U.S. workforce. It also said most of its U.S. employees are Americans.

Microsoft defended its compensation practices, saying H-1B workers receive the same pay as other employees doing comparable work. It said it looks forward to giving the administration additional information.

That response makes a meaningful point about how to read the totals: a visa application is not automatically a new arrival or a one-for-one replacement for a laid-off worker.

It does not, by itself, resolve whether particular labor-certification applications complied with the rules. That requires the underlying records, not competing press statements.

The suspension is real; allegations of fraud still need to be established. Readers should not confuse an announced investigation with a court finding that every company on the list broke the law.

Now comes the test

The administration has put a meaningful tool behind its America First message. The next test is whether investigators can document the alleged abuses and whether the companies change any practices the evidence shows were improper.

Microsoft says its records will tell a different story. Fine: produce them and let the investigation establish what happened.

ADVERTISEMENT

American workers deserve an immigration system that keeps its promises to them. Even when the company asking for access is Microsoft.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.