Labor Department bars Microsoft, Adobe from worker green card program

Foreign-born employees at eight American tech companies will no longer have a path to permanent U.S. residency through their current employer. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling joined Vice President J.D. Vance on Thursday to announce the move to bar Microsoft, Adobe, and six other corporations from filing new applications for Permanent Employment Certification for employees in the U.S. on H-1B work visas.

Vance said Microsoft fired 6,000 American workers last year, while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas. He suggested the companies were aiming to save money by replacing American workers with foreign-born employees willing to work for lower wages, much like indentured servants in the colonial era.

Immigration law firm Ellis reports that of Microsoft’s 1,000 PERM filings in the last year, they have laid off 871 employees, suggesting foreign-born workers were also affected by job cuts.

Amazon, the leading U.S. employer of H-1B employees, was not on the list. In 2025, the company had more than 13,000 H-1B visas approved, according to government data.

What are the companies saying about it? In a statement, Microsoft said it would provide the administration with additional information about its labor practices. The company says about 80% of its H-1B visa applications last fiscal year were to update the status of existing employees, not new hires. The company also said the remaining filings were for foreign-born workers already legally living in the United States, and that they pay H-1B employees competitively.

Adobe did not respond to multiple requests for comment. This story will be updated with any responses received.

What else is the Department of Labor doing? The Labor Department’s inspector general is investigating nine universities receiving federal grants that employ foreign-born postgraduate researchers on J-1 visas. Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito said his office will investigate whether universities with federal research grants are giving foreign actors from countries like China improper access to American research. The Justice Department in 2020 investigated Chinese students with military ties at two of the schools named Thursday, UC Davis and Stanford, but later dropped visa fraud charges.

Dig deeper: Read Addie Offereins’ report on how H-1B employees affect the U.S. economy.