The US Department of Labor announced on Thursday that it will suspend Microsoft and Adobe from its permanent labor certification program, according to Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling. This comes as the Trump administration continues to target immigration and foreign hiring programs ahead of the November midterm elections.
Sonderling stated that the Labor Department will not accept or process any new applications under the program from numerous companies, including Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro, and HCL.
The secretary said Adobe and Microsoft were also suspended "due to multiple ongoing federal investigations." "Since 2009, these companies alone have applied for nearly 3 million foreign workers. They obtained over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and more than 100,000 permanent labor certifications. That represents hundreds of thousands of jobs taken from American workers," Sonderling said.
Vice President JD Vance specifically criticized Microsoft, pointing out that the company laid off 6,000 workers in 2025. Vance claimed the company "replaced these workers with H-1B visa holders." "So we will continue to support Microsoft and maintain a good relationship with Microsoft, but we will also strip them of the ability to apply for these permanent residencies until they show they will take putting American workers first seriously," Vance said.
Microsoft responded to Vance's claims in a statement on Thursday and defended its hiring practices, saying "the vast majority of Microsoft's employees in the United States are Americans." "Of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications we filed in the last fiscal year, 80% were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees," the company said.
Trump will present the National Medal of Science to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and other leading tech CEOs at the same summit on Thursday, where the suspension announcement was made. Nadella, who is from India, moved to the United States in 1988. He joined Microsoft in 1992. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su will also be honored at Thursday's medal ceremony. These leaders are all immigrants to the United States. Musk was born in South Africa, while Su and Huang were born in Taiwan.
"If you want to bring in someone like Elon Musk, that's one thing," Vance said. "I think 99% of American citizens would see someone like Elon Musk or AMD CEO Lisa Su and say, obviously, if that person wants to come to the United States of America and build great things, we support that."
Tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Apple have been among the major sponsors of H-1B visas for decades. According to 2026 data from Levels.fyi, Amazon had the highest number of applications this year with 35,426 workers, followed by Cognizant and EY. Microsoft ranked fourth with 21,706 applications for 2026, by a narrow margin, with a median base salary of $180,710. Microsoft said it only files applications for workers who "meet the strict standards of this visa category" and stated that Microsoft H-1B workers' salaries are among the highest across all H-1B applications.