Vice President J.D. Vance speaks alongside, from left to right, White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanchet, U.S. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito, and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson during a press conference regarding a federal investigation charging fraud and abuse in the H-1B visa program, October 8, 2026, in Washington.
Alex Roblewski AFP | Getty Images
When the Trump administration announced Thursday that it was no longer sponsoring foreign workers for green cards at eight technology companies, Vice President J.D. Vance singled out Microsoft and claimed it had 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 immigrants permanent residency, does not affect H-1B temporary work permits, but H-1B approval data shows how dependent these companies are on foreign workers.
Data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ H-1B Employer Data Hub also shows: Amazon and Meta is the largest sponsor of H-1B visas, and neither was suspended.
The crackdown goes beyond technology. At the same press conference Thursday, Department of Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito announced the opening of an investigation into alleged J-1 visa fraud involving nine major American universities. Trump supporters have long argued that these programs strain the U.S. workforce by encouraging employers to hire from overseas.
who is on the list
All eight suspended companies rank among the top 50 H-1B sponsors in the country. Most of them are IT services and consulting companies. adobe The smallest one is number 45.
Biggest Sponsor Was Not Suspended
Amazon, with 19,178 H-1B approvals in fiscal year 2025, and Meta, with 6,294, were the top two sponsors, but neither was suspended. Microsoft came in a close third with 6,258 cases, according to the USCIS Data Hub. Microsoft has been a longtime backer of Amazon. Amazon overtook Microsoft in 2017 and now has about three times as many approvals.
If you do the math, for every employee Microsoft fires, it replaces them with one and a half foreign indentured servants. …Microsoft is a great American company and we have a great relationship with them.
JD Vance
Vice President of the United States
what the numbers show
The numbers go both ways. As Vance noted, Microsoft received more than 6,000 H-1B approvals last year. But two-thirds went to people already working there. Amazon has hired nearly four times as many new H-1B workers, but they are not on the suspension list.
