Microsoft president warns green-card curbs could harm US tech, disputes H-1B abuse claims

Microsoft President Brad Smith has criticized the Trump administration's suspension of Microsoft and seven other companies from a permanent-residency filing program, saying it could damage the US technology industry and that claims of H-1B abuse by his company are wrong. Business Today and the Free Press Journal reported his comments on October 16, drawing on an interview with Politico.

The suspension

Business Today reported that on October 8 the administration suspended Microsoft and seven other companies from the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program: Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini. It described PERM as the main employer-sponsored route to permanent residency for skilled workers, and said the freeze halts processing of pending applications and bars the companies from filing new ones.

Business Today reported that Vice President JD Vance announced the move and accused companies of using foreign workers to replace laid-off Americans and to hold down wages. The Free Press Journal reported that he announced it less than a week before Smith's comments.

What Smith said

According to the Free Press Journal, Smith spoke to Politico's Decoded at an international AI summit in Dublin. Both outlets report that he called the claim that Microsoft misused H-1B visas to hire foreign workers at lower pay "completely off base" and suggested the administration had received inaccurate information.

The two reports attribute these further points to Smith:

• Microsoft uses one compensation system for all staff regardless of immigration status.
• The company hired more than 9,000 US-born workers in the past year, and he asked White House officials to review its employment data.
• Most of Microsoft's green-card applications are for employees who have worked there for years, not new hires. He attributed delays to the length of the green-card backlog.
• Restrictive policies could push top AI and software engineering talent to other countries, and uncertainty over permanent residency could deter skilled professionals from building careers in the US.

The Free Press Journal also reported that Smith noted that five of the six Americans Trump honored with technology and science medals were immigrants, and that those people and their companies together account for more than 25 percent of the S&P 500's market value.

What the reports do not say

Neither report includes a response from the White House or from Vance to Smith's comments. Business Today described its own account as a secondary report and the figures as Smith's own; neither outlet independently verified the hiring numbers or the share of long-serving employees. The reports also do not say how many of the other seven companies' applications are affected.