“This is a fundamental insult to the American worker and the American way of life.”
That was Vice President JD Vance at a recent press conference on abuses in foreign worker programs that didn’t get the attention it deserved. Flanked by the attorney general, the secretary of labor, and others in his anti-fraud task force, the vice president announced unprecedented moves in response to corporate and university abuse of visa programs that harm American workers.
Pursuant to President Trump’s September executive order to enhance the integrity of the H-1B program, Vance announced that Microsoft, Adobe, and half a dozen big Indian rent-a-programmer firms were suspended from converting their H-1B workers to permanent green cards through what is known as the “PERM” process. This is important because many foreigners come here on “temporary” H-1B visas precisely as a means of permanent immigration.
To illustrate the abuses of the program, Vance said Microsoft last year laid off 6,000 Americans and at the same time hired more than 6,300 H-1Bs, and rewarded more than 3,000 “temporary” foreign workers with permanent residence.
This was not presented as an attack on Microsoft; Vance said, “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 replace them with foreign indentured servants.’”
…