The government of Donald Trump is suspending tech giant Microsoft from a program to request green cards for workers who come to the U.S. using H-1B visas, accusing the company of fraud.
A supporters of the Republican president have long argued that various programs, such as the one the vice president JD Vance accused Microsoft of abusing, essentially empower American companies to recruit foreign workers for jobs that end up harming Americans.
Vance stated that the program from which Microsoft is being suspended requires companies to advertise jobs in the United States and only afterward prove that they need to grant a green card to a foreign worker due to the lack of American workers.
Vance said that last year Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers, but also secured 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. “If you do the math, for every worker Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign contract workers,” he emphasized.
The announcement came hours before Trump was scheduled to award the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, as part of an event in which he is giving some of the country’s most prestigious science and technology prizes to his billionaire tech allies.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
*Content translated with the aid of Artificial Intelligence, reviewed and edited by the Broadcast Editorial Desk (Grupo Estado’s real-time news system).
