Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling suspended Microsoft, Adobe, and top Indian staffing firms from a key green-card program, saying the companies replaced American workers with cheaper foreign labor.

On Thursday, Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling announced the Department of Labor is suspending Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCO, and Capgemini from the Permanent Labor Certification Program. That program is the main federal route companies use to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency.

Sonderling tied the move to what he called decades of abuse that shifted jobs away from Americans. He thanked President Trump, the vice president, and a federal task force for the action.

Breitbart News reported Vance and Attorney General Todd Blanche joined the announcement with sharp criticism of H-1B and J-1 visa use by big tech and universities.

Vance framed the H-1B program as one meant for truly scarce talent, not routine replacement of U.S. staff. He pointed straight at Microsoft’s recent record.

Vice President Vance told reporters the company had cut thousands of Americans while still pulling in large numbers of foreign visas and green cards.

"Unfortunately, the program has become rife with fraud over the last several years, probably the last several decades... Microsoft laid off last year 6,000 American workers. At the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards [for foreign workers].... If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replace that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants."

He added a direct message to the company: hire Americans first.

"Our message to Microsoft is you’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers."

The New York Post carried the same Microsoft layoff and visa figures Vance cited, along with the administration’s decision to bar the firm from the PERM green-card track.

Sonderling went further on the scale of the problem. He listed the IT outsourcing firms he was cutting off and linked their long record of foreign-worker requests to lost American jobs.

"I am hereby suspending from the Permanent Labor Certification Program some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world: Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCO, and Capgemini. And also, due to multiple active federal investigations, the Department of Labor is suspending Microsoft and Adobe from the program."

He put hard numbers on the volume since 2009.

"Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers. They’ve received over 230,000 H-1B visas approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications. That’s hundreds of 1000s of jobs that were taken from American workers. Our historic action is the first critical step to stop the fraud and the abuse, and ensure that these programs never come at the expense of the American worker."

Sonderling described the targeted firms as the core of the system that enabled the pattern for decades, saying the suspensions cut off that channel.

Vance has taken on other high-stakes assignments in the administration, including chairing a Camp David national security huddle on Iran and Houthi threats, even as this labor fight landed.

Attorney General Todd Blanche stressed the human cost, especially for younger Americans locked out of starter jobs.

"This issue has affected Americans across generations, but it’s especially important to young people with a lot of talent who can’t find a job because their potential employer may be engaging in these sort of improper and nefarious practices... The issue of foreign labor favoritism is something that nobody should ignore, and we at the Department of Justice will continue to do our part to make sure that doesn’t happen."

Administration officials have said many visa programs keep roughly 2.5 million foreign workers in roles that would otherwise go to American graduates. Blanche cast the Justice Department as ready to keep pressure on favoritism that freezes out U.S. talent.

Vance also turned to universities. He named nine schools he said merit investigation for heavy J-1 visa use on federally funded grants: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, UC Davis, Caltech, Arizona State, and MIT.

He said those campuses employ J-1 holders on federal grants at about 61 percent, against a national average of 38 percent. He also claimed an American graduate student or researcher earns about $20,000 more than a J-1 hire in the same role.

"So something weird is going on at these universities. They’re using these visas way too much," Vance said.

That focus on protecting American careers fits the harder line Vance has drawn in other fights, including warnings that a Democrat Congress would mean endless probes and a war on American energy.

Stephen Miller, speaking alongside the officials, drew a bright line between welcoming exceptional talent and undercutting the next generation of American workers.

"As the vice president said, we always welcome and bring to this country individuals who have exceptional gifts to share with our country. But what we don’t do and can’t do is crush and kill the dreams of millions of young [Americans] in middle school and high school who want that first step in the ladder but are unable to get it, or mid-career workers who’ve dedicated their lives to a company and are given two weeks’ notice just because someone else somewhere in the world is willing to do the job 20, 30, 40, 50 percent cheaper than they are."

Miller argued the United States had finally turned its immigration system toward its own people rather than against them. The wage gap he described is the core incentive officials say drives the outsourcing model.

Vance’s public standing has faced other tests inside the coalition, from Republican pressure over alliances after a closed-door speech to earlier reporting disputes, yet the visa crackdown puts him at the center of a pocketbook fight many voters feel directly.

The Permanent Labor Certification suspensions do not erase every visa route, and the package left open questions about the exact legal orders, the length of the bans, and the specific federal investigations already open into Microsoft and Adobe. What is clear is the signal: the largest users of these programs now face a closed door on the main path to permanent residency sponsorship.

For years, companies treated H-1B and green-card pipelines as a cheaper staffing channel while American graduates and mid-career professionals got the pink slips. That trade is no longer cost-free in Washington.