White House Cuts Microsoft and Adobe Off the Green-Card Pipeline — Nine Universities Just Got Subpoenas

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration took its biggest swing yet at legal immigration on Thursday morning, announcing it is suspending some of the world's largest tech employers from the federal pipeline that leads to green cards — and serving subpoenas on nine of the country's most prestigious universities.

The announcement came from Vice President JD Vance, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, Attorney General Todd Blanche and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller at a press conference for the administration's fraud task force in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The through-line of the event, per the officials: that companies and universities have gamed immigration programs meant for hard-to-fill jobs into a system for cheaper foreign labor.

The corporate side of the crackdown is the Permanent Labor Certification Program — known as PERM — the Labor Department certification step employers must clear before filing most employment-based green card petitions. Under PERM, an employer has to show there is no qualified, willing and available American worker for the specific job. Suspended from it as of Thursday: Microsoft, Adobe, and six large IT outsourcing firms — Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini.

Sonderling said the government will not accept any new applications or process any pending ones involving those companies. The scale he described: just these firms have requested almost 3 million foreign workers since 2009 and received more than 230,000 H-1B visas. "We are cutting off the head of the snake, the companies that have enabled this abuse for decades," Sonderling said. He called the department's action historic — "shutting down the pipeline of systemic fraud."

Vance delivered the most pointed rhetoric of the morning, aimed squarely at Microsoft. The company laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards, he said, and he did the math for the cameras — claiming that for every worker Microsoft laid off, the company replaced them with one and a half foreign workers he called "indentured servants." It is worth noting, as Newsmax's account of the event did, that his arithmetic does not actually establish that each visa or green card went to someone replacing a laid-off worker. The implication, though, is the message: "Our message to Microsoft is: You're a great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers."

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters. And the timing adds its own layer: the announcement landed just hours before President Trump was scheduled to present the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at a White House event honoring tech industry allies, per the Associated Press.

What happens next for the suspended companies is an open question. The announcement did not specify how long the suspension lasts, how pending applications will be treated, or what — if anything — the companies can do to get back into the program. CNN reported that Vance said only that the firms should "change their behavior, improve their behavior and actually get better."

The second front opened at the same event: universities. Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito announced an investigation into what he called visa fraud involving nine major American universities — Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, UC Davis, Caltech, MIT and Arizona State. The specific target is the J-1 visa program, which lets institutions bring in foreign nationals as students, researchers and teachers. Officials allege the schools use the program to staff positions with cheaper foreign labor, undercutting American graduate students and researchers.

"Subpoenas have been served, investigations are underway and nobody will be getting a free pass because their name is carved into an expensive building," D'Esposito said. He added that the probe will examine "whether foreign influence, improper financial relationships, or visa abuse are compromising federally funded research," and said that if a school is breaking the law to save a dollar while exposing American research to a foreign adversary, "that is not academic excellence. It's institutional betrayal."

The university angle reignites the administration's feud with elite institutions, which have been in the White House's crosshairs since Trump returned to office — and it opens a new immigration front weeks before the November 3 midterm elections, with the administration framing the crackdown as protecting Americans' access to jobs.

There is also a context worth keeping in mind. Supporters of the president have long argued that programs like the H-1B and PERM pipeline let American companies recruit foreign workers for jobs that undercut American wages, and that the system is rife with abuse. The tech industry's counterargument — that the U.S. simply does not produce enough specialized workers to fill certain roles — did not get airtime at the Eisenhower building on Thursday. The administration's fraud framing will likely face legal challenges from the companies and universities involved, who have deep pockets and experienced counsel, but as of this morning the suspension is the operative fact: no new or pending labor certifications for eight of the biggest employers of foreign workers on the planet.

This is a developing story — it comes as the administration's immigration agenda also faces court fights elsewhere, including a federal court hearing Thursday on the White House's ban of CNN, MS NOW and Politico, and as the White House's broader pre-midterm posture hardens on everything from Iran strike options to the courts.