“For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants.”
Vice President JD Vance, White House fraud task force briefing, October 8, 2026
Vance said it at the White House on Thursday, flanked by Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling and Attorney General Todd Blanche, and then he announced the penalty.
Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini are suspended from PERM, the Labor Department certification that is the first step toward an employer-sponsored green card.
The number behind that quote does not survive contact with the government’s own data. Vance’s “one and a half” adds H-1B renewals for people Microsoft already employs to green cards for people Microsoft already employs, then divides by layoffs. Count only new H-1B hires and the ratio is closer to one in four.
The penalty has the same problem. It does not stop a single H-1B hire. It freezes the green card queue for workers who are already here.
The Math Vance Used
Vance’s accounting went like this: Microsoft laid off about 6,000 American workers last year while it gained 6,300 H-1B visas and about 3,000 green cards.
Add 6,300 and 3,000, divide by 6,000, and you get roughly 1.55. That is where “one and a half” comes from.
The H-1B figure is real. It is also two different numbers glued together.
What the Vice President Counted
6,300 H-1B approvals, plus about 3,000 green cards, set against about 6,000 layoffs. Every approval and every green card treated as a fresh foreign hire replacing an American.
What the USCIS Data Shows
1,394 approvals for initial employment, meaning new H-1B workers. 4,863 approvals for continuing employment, meaning extensions and amendments for people already on Microsoft’s payroll. Green cards go overwhelmingly to people already working there.
The split comes from USCIS employer data compiled in the National Foundation for American Policy’s fiscal 2025 brief. Microsoft’s 1,394 initial approvals plus 4,863 continuing approvals is 6,257. That is Vance’s 6,300.
The same brief warns, in plain type, that “adding up initial and continuing employment for employers similarly creates a distorted picture.” A continuing approval is often the same engineer getting a three-year extension, or a new petition because the person moved offices.
Then there are the 3,000 green cards. An employment-based green card is not a hire. It is the end of a years-long process for someone the company already employs, which is exactly what PERM certifies.
So the honest version of Vance’s ratio uses new hires only: 1,394 against 6,000 layoffs. That is about 0.23 new H-1B workers per laid-off American, less than a sixth of the figure he used.
You can still argue 1,394 is too many for a company cutting jobs. That is a real policy argument. It is not the argument Vance made, and “indentured servants” is not a description of people earning, by Microsoft’s account, some of the highest wages in any H-1B filing.
What the Freeze Actually Does
Under the suspension, the department will not accept new PERM applications from the eight employers and has stopped working on pending ones. H-1B petitions are not suspended. No company has been charged, though Blanche said criminal charges against companies or people are possible.
Read that twice, because it inverts the stated goal.
If the complaint is that Microsoft brings in too many foreign workers, the H-1B pipeline is where new foreign workers enter. That pipeline is untouched.
What stops is the path out of temporary status for people Microsoft hired years ago. Their green card process now sits in a queue the government will not process.
For Indian nationals, who face employment-based backlogs well beyond the six-year H-1B limit, that matters a great deal. Under the AC21 law, a worker can extend H-1B status past six years only once a PERM case or immigrant petition has been pending for at least 365 days.
Immigration lawyers at Reddy Neumann Brown note that a frozen case is still a pending case, so workers who filed long ago keep their extensions. The ones in trouble are those who had not filed yet. They cannot start the clock.
That is a penalty aimed at an employer and paid by its employees.
The Rule They Are Using, and the One They Are Not
The department has not published an order. The rule that fits is 20 CFR 656.31(b), which lets it suspend processing when it refers possible fraud for investigation.
That suspension “may last initially for up to 180 days.” After that, if no indictment has issued, processing can resume or the hold can be extended until the investigation ends.
The same section has a tougher tool, debarment, under paragraph (f). A debarment notice must state the reason for the finding and identify appeal rights.
The administration chose the tool that requires no stated finding and no appeal. It announced it at a press conference before any charge.
There is a paper trail here worth noticing. Cognizant’s PERM filings were already suspended in September, alongside Cloudera’s, after a Labor inspector general probe run with the same White House task force. Thursday’s list reached for much bigger names.
Who Pays, and Who Barely Notices
Microsoft’s response was short. “The vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans,” the company said, adding that it files H-1B petitions only for people who meet its standards and pays among the highest wages of any filer.
The outsourcers sounded almost relaxed. India’s industry body Nasscom said that “the number of employees transitioning from H-1B visas to permanent residency through PERM is relatively limited.” Indian IT stocks rose Friday as investors concluded existing visas and daily operations were untouched.
That is the tell. The firms whose business model runs most heavily on temporary visas sponsor comparatively few green cards, so a green card freeze costs them little.
The company that sponsors heavily is Microsoft, and its sponsorship was already falling. Labor Department disclosure data compiled by Ellis shows Microsoft’s certified PERM cases dropping from 2,707 in fiscal 2024 to 919 in fiscal 2025.
We think this is a press release dressed as enforcement.
If Microsoft or any of these firms committed visa fraud, the Justice Department has an Attorney General who stood at that podium. File charges. If the Labor Department has a fraud finding, issue a debarment notice under 656.31(f), state the reasons, and let the companies appeal, as the rule requires.
What should not happen is a 180-day freeze, renewable without limit, announced with a ratio that inflates the government’s own figures more than sixfold.
Investors should price this as political risk rather than legal risk for now. Microsoft’s green card queue is a rounding error on its income statement.
The people for whom it is not a rounding error are the engineers in that queue. They did nothing wrong, and on Thursday they learned their residency depends on whether their employer is in favour at the White House.