The White House crackdown on green cards for skilled foreign workers could “cripple” US tech for more than a generation, Microsoft president Brad Smith told Politico.
His comments came a week after the US suspended Microsoft and seven other companies from PERM, the Labor Department programme employers use to sponsor foreign staff for permanent residency.
Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini were also suspended while officials look into fraud allegations.
Announcing the move on 8 October, Vice President JD Vance said Microsoft had laid off 6,000 American workers last year. In the same period, he said, it got 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards.
“They replace that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” Vance said at a White House press conference.
Smith, however, called that account “completely off base.”
Speaking to Politico in Ireland, he said most of Microsoft’s visa and green card requests are for people who already work there, many for years. Long government backlogs, he said, are the reason those cases take so long.
He also argued that the administration’s picture leaves out Microsoft’s domestic hiring. The company took on 9,200 American workers in its last financial year, according to Smith, and pays visa holders on the same terms as everyone else.
Someone “failed to inform the vice president accurately about our numbers,” Smith said.
Looking ahead, he warned that the crackdown could push “the most talented next wave” of engineers to build their careers in other countries instead.
The suspension does not stop Microsoft from hiring workers on H-1B visas, GeekWire reported. It does, however, close the main route those workers use to stay in the US for good. The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Smith’s remarks.
The dispute has also reached beyond the US. India’s government said the suspension leaves H-1B visas valid and rebuked Vance over his language.