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As the Trump administration announced Thursday that it suspended eight tech companies from sponsoring foreign workers for green cards, Vice President JD Vance singled out Microsoft, claiming it replaced the 6,000 workers it laid off in 2025 with people on H-1B work visas. The suspension of the Labor Department's PERM program for green cards, which grant permanent residency to immigrants, doesn't affect H-1Bs, which are temporary work permits, but H-1B approval data shows how heavily these companies rely on foreign workers. Data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' H-1B Employer Data Hub also shows that Amazon and Meta were the biggest sponsors of H-1B visas, and neither was suspended. The crackdown went beyond tech. At the same news conference Thursday, the Labor Department's inspector general, Anthony D'Esposito, announced an investigation into alleged J-1 visa fraud involving nine major American universities. Trump supporters have long argued that these programs undercut American workers by incentivizing employers to hire from abroad. Who's on the list All eight suspended companies rank among the nation's top 50 H-1B sponsors. Most are IT services and consulting firms. Adobe is the smallest, at No. 45. The biggest sponsor wasn't suspended Amazon, with 19,178 H-1B approvals in fiscal 2025, and Meta, with 6,294, were the top two sponsors, and neither was suspended. Microsoft was a close third with 6,258, according to the USCIS data hub. Microsoft out-sponsored Amazon for years. Amazon passed Microsoft in 2017 and now gets about three times as many approvals. If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants. ... Microsoft is a great American company, and we have a great relationship with them.JD VanceVice President of the United States What the numbers show The numbers cut both ways. Microsoft did receive more than 6,000 H-1B approvals last year, as Vance said. But 2 in 3 went to people already working there. Amazon, which brought in nearly four times as many H-1B workers new to the company, was not on the suspension list.
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