United States Vice President JD Vance has issued a direct warning to Microsoft, saying the technology giant must not lay off American workers and replace them with foreign labour under the country’s H-1B visa programme.
Vance said the administration wants American technology companies to expand and attract investment but insisted that such growth must translate into more jobs for US workers.
His remarks come amid an intensifying crackdown by the Donald Trump administration on alleged abuses of the H-1B visa system, which allows US employers to temporarily hire foreign workers for specialised occupations.
“We obviously want you to thrive in the United States of America. We want people to invest in the United States of America, particularly the American technology sector. We are the biggest boosters of your industry,” Vance said.
“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 a 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.”
Vance also accused major US corporations, particularly technology companies, of exploiting the H-1B programme by using foreign workers as a cheaper alternative to American employees.
He argued that the visa programme was originally intended to enable companies to recruit highly specialised foreign talent where qualified American workers were unavailable.
“The H-1B visa program is meant to allow companies to bring in really the best of the best from outside the United States of America for positions that are completely impossible to fill with American workers,” he said.
However, Vance alleged that the system has become vulnerable to widespread abuse.
“Unfortunately, the program has become rife with fraud over the last several years, probably the last several decades,” he said.
According to the vice president, some companies allegedly advertise vacancies in ways that make it difficult to attract American applicants before claiming they cannot find suitable domestic workers.
“And here’s the basic game that American corporations and foreign corporations will play,” Vance said.
“They will say, maybe they’ll put an advertisement in a small town newspaper. They’ll go out there and say that we have advertised for a position with our company and nobody is responding to it.”
He alleged that companies then use the lack of applicants as justification for bringing in foreign workers and displacing American employees.
“And they will use that lack of response to then go and replace American workers with what is effectively foreign indentured service,” he added