In pic: Microsoft president Brad Smith
Microsoft president Brad Smith has warned that the US government’s move suspending Microsoft and other tech giants from the Green Card sponsorship programme could hurt the country’s technological competitiveness and drive talent overseas.
In an exclusive interview with Decoded by Politico, Brad Smith pushed back against Vice President JD Vance's accusations that Microsoft had abused the H-1B visa program, calling them "completely off base". He also pointed at the irony that the White House put restrictions on Microsoft on the same day it gave a medal to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, a former H-1B skilled visa holder from India.Expressing concerns about the impact the crackdown on the ability of the U.S.
to attract top tech talent, Smith said: “I think we should all be worried about sending — intentionally or inadvertently or otherwise — signals that send the most talented next wave of AI [or] SI software engineers to other countries, rather than the United States”. Notably, Brad Smith’s comments come almost a week after the US government announced that it will bar Microsoft, TCS, Infosys and other companies from seeking green cards for skilled foreign workers.
What Microsoft president Brad Smith said
During the interview, Microsoft president Brad Smith said: “We should consider the fact that when the president honored six Americans with these technology and science medals, five of the six had come to the United States as immigrants,” adding “And those five individuals, if you put them and their companies together, have companies that have a market value equal to more than 25% of the market value of the total S&P 500.
”“Think about what those five individuals have done for the well-being, even the wealth and standard of living, of Americans across the country. Let’s not put that at risk,” he continued.
Microsoft president Brad Smith rejects visa fraud accusations against the company
Brad Smith also rejected JD Vance’s visa fraud accusations and called the vice president’s claims “completely off base.” He said someone “had failed to inform the vice president accurately about our numbers,” noting that the “vast majority” of Microsoft’s green card applications were for long-time employees, not new hires.“Unfortunately, it’s just because the green card backlog is so long,” said Smith.Denying that the company pays foreign-born workers less, the Microsoft executive said “it doesn’t matter whether you came on a visa or you’re an American worker, everybody has the same compensation system.” And he complained that the more than 9,000 U.S.-born workers that Microsoft hired last year were “left out of the narrative” propagated by the White House.“We will stand by our record,” said Smith. “And I hope that folks at the White House might look again and look at what we think is a more accurate picture.”