Microsoft Was Suspended From a Green-Card Program the Same Day Its CEO Got a Medal

The U.S. Department of Labor suspended Microsoft and Adobe from its Permanent Labor Certification program on Thursday, October 8, 2026, saying the two companies face "multiple active federal investigations." Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling also suspended Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL — the department will not accept or process any new or pending applications from any of them. 12

The program is the step where the government certifies there is no willing, qualified American worker for the job before an employer can sponsor a green card for a foreign worker. It was announced at the White House by Vice President JD Vance, Sonderling and Attorney General Todd Blanche under the administration's anti-fraud task force. Sonderling put the group's numbers since 2009 at almost three million foreign workers requested, over 230,000 H-1B approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications. 13

Vance said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year while obtaining 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. "If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants," he said, describing how he says the certification gets gamed: "They'll put an advertisement in a small-town newspaper." He called the outsourcing firms "visa mills" and the workers "foreign indentured servants." 34

Microsoft answered the same day: "the vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans," and of the roughly 6,000 H-1B applications it filed last fiscal year, 80 percent were to extend or change the status of people already working there. The remaining new-hire filings, the company said, were already legally in the country and equal 1 percent of its U.S. workforce: "They are not new arrivals to our country." 45

The suspension does not cancel anyone's H-1B status and does not stop the companies employing foreign nationals. It lands hardest on workers near the six-year cap, whose ability to extend depends on the green-card process the department just froze; a court challenge is an option for the companies. Roughly three-quarters of approved H-1B visas go to workers from India, and Microsoft is fifth among U.S. employers for H-1B use, behind Amazon. 34

Doug Rand, a former senior adviser at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, called the announcement "incoherent": "Once you have a green card, you're no longer dependent on your employer for your immigration status." Vance also said the administration would investigate nine universities, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, over a student-visa program. 24

The earlier fight over this program is still on the record: the administration raised the H-1B application fee to $100,000, a federal judge blocked it in June, and Homeland Security proposed a new $103,265 fee in late August. Nothing in Thursday's action has been adjudicated. 6

On the same day, at a science summit in Washington, President Trump awarded the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su, and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft's Satya Nadella and Dell's Michael Dell. Nadella moved to the United States from India in 1988; Huang and Su were born in Taiwan; Musk was born in South Africa. 17

"The Same Day" is an original rap song and music video built from those facts.