US Suspends H-1B Green Card Program for Microsoft, Adobe and Five Other Tech Giants

The US government has frozen the green card sponsorship programs for seven major technology companies, alleging systematic fraud in how they recruit international workers. Microsoft and Adobe are the most prominent names on the list, joined by Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that the department will reject any new permanent labor certification applications from these firms and will not process applications already pending. The action represents an escalation in federal scrutiny of how tech companies use the H-1B visa system, which permits employers to hire skilled workers from abroad when they claim insufficient domestic talent exists.

Vice President JD Vance framed the suspension as a response to deliberate deception. He alleged that the targeted companies have intentionally minimized their domestic job advertising to manufacture a justification for hiring international workers instead of American citizens. Vance used pointed language to describe the arrangement, calling visa workers "effectively foreign indentured servants" and singling out Microsoft as the worst offender. "There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has used this system more than Microsoft," he said. The accusation goes beyond simple hiring preference—it suggests these companies have gamed the system by suppressing domestic recruitment efforts to create artificial scarcity of American applicants.

Microsoft responded with a detailed defense of its hiring practices. The company stated that the vast majority of its US workforce consists of American citizens and that most of its H-1B filings are not for new hires at all. Of approximately 6,000 H-1B applications submitted in the last fiscal year, Microsoft said 80 percent were to extend or change the status of workers already employed by the company. The remaining 20 percent, the company explained, involved individuals who were already legally present in the United States when they joined Microsoft—not new arrivals brought in from abroad. These new hires represented just 1 percent of Microsoft's total US workforce. The company emphasized that it only files H-1B petitions for candidates meeting the visa category's rigorous standards. Adobe has not yet responded to requests for comment.

The government's action follows a pattern of enforcement against tech companies over similar allegations. In August, the Department of Justice secured a $3.2 million settlement from OpenAI after the company was accused of under-advertising job openings domestically and preferring workers with temporary employment visas. Meta faced comparable charges and settled in 2021, as did Apple in 2023. These cases suggest a sustained federal focus on whether major technology employers are using visa programs as a substitute for hiring American workers rather than as a genuine supplement when domestic talent cannot be found.

Data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services shows that Amazon currently employs the most H-1B visa holders, followed by Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Apple, and Microsoft. The ranking underscores that visa-dependent hiring is widespread across the industry, though the government has chosen to suspend programs only for the seven companies named in this action. Beyond the tech sector, the government announced it would investigate nine higher education institutions, including Harvard University, Yale University, and Stanford University, for alleged misuse of J-1 visa programs for international students. The dual enforcement action suggests the administration views visa program abuse as a systemic problem spanning both corporate and academic sectors.