Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he is suspending Microsoft, Adobe and several other IT firms' ability to hire foreign-born workers for permanent jobs in the U.S.
Why it matters: The move will affect hundreds of companies owned by the tech giant, escalating the Trump administration's cracking down on immigrant labor.
What they're saying: "We want people to invest in the United States of America, particularly the American technology sector," Vance said during a Thursday news conference.
- "We're the biggest boosters of your industry. We want you to continue to grow and to employ a lot of people, but we want you to employ American workers."
- "And so our message to Microsoft is, you're great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants."
Zoom in: The program, the permanent labor certification program, administered through the Department of Labor, allows a company to hire a foreign worker to live permanently in America.
Driving the news: Vance specifically singled out Microsoft, slamming them for laying off 6,000 workers last year.
- Vance said Thursday that "[a]t the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. In other words, if you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants. Now that is a scandalous system that we've allowed in this country for far too long."
- Microsoft owns hundreds of companies, including LinkedIn, Skype and gaming studio Activision Blizzard.
- He also called out and suspended Adobe and IT outsourcing firms Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini from the program.
Worth noting: Trump will award Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at the White House today.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.