Vice President JD Vance speaks alongside, from left, White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, U.S. Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling, Department of Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson at a news conference regarding a federal investigation alleging fraud and abuse of the H-1B visa program, in Washington, DC, 8 October 2026.
Alex Wroblewski | AFP | Getty Images
As the Trump administration announced Thursday it was suspending eight tech companies from sponsoring foreign workers for green cards, Vice President JD Vance pointed the finger at Microsoft, saying 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 permanent residency to immigrants, does not affect H-1Bs, which are temporary work permits, but H-1B approval data shows how much these companies rely on foreign workers.
Data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services H-1B Employer Data Center also shows that Amazon And Meta were the largest sponsors of H-1B visas, and none were suspended.
The repression went beyond technology. At the same news conference Thursday, Department of Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito announced an investigation into alleged J-1 visa fraud involving nine major U.S. universities. Trump supporters have long argued that these programs harm American workers by incentivizing employers to hire from abroad.
Who’s on the list
The eight suspended companies are among the top 50 H-1B sponsors in the country. Most are IT services and consulting companies. Adobe is the smallest, at #45.
The 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, and neither was suspended. Microsoft comes in third with 6,258, according to the USCIS Data Center. Microsoft has over-sponsored Amazon for years. Amazon surpassed Microsoft in 2017 and now gets about three times as many approvals.
If you do the math, for every worker Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign contract employees. …Microsoft is a large American company with which we have excellent relations.
J.D. Vance
Vice President of the United States
What the numbers show
The numbers go both ways. Microsoft received more than 6,000 H-1B approvals last year, as Vance said. But 2 out of 3 went to people who already worked there. Amazon, which brought nearly four times as many new H-1B workers to the company, was not on the suspension list.
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