Vance Suspends Microsoft's Green Card Filings, Not Amazon's

Opinion. Every figure below is sourced in the box at the end; the conclusions are the author's.

In the United States, on October 8, 2026, Vice President JD Vance announced that Microsoft, Adobe and six IT services firms (Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini) are suspended from the Labor Department's PERM program, the usual first step to sponsoring a worker for a green card. “If you do the math,” Vance said, “for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants.”

I want American jobs to go to Americans first. That is not a controversial idea in any country on earth. But the way a government enforces it matters as much as the goal, and this announcement has a hole in it you could drive a truck through.

What the suspension does

According to Fortune, the Labor Department will not accept new PERM applications from the eight companies and will not process those already pending. H-1B visas, the temporary permits run by USCIS, are not touched. PERM requires an employer to advertise a job and show that no qualified U.S. worker is available before it sponsors a foreign employee for permanent residency. Fortune reports that Microsoft is the program's biggest user, with 3,161 decisions in the year to September 2025.

Asked how long it would last, Vance said it would “last as long as it needs to.”

The list that is missing a name

CNBC, using USCIS's H-1B employer data, reports that Amazon had 19,178 H-1B approvals in fiscal 2025 and Meta 6,294. Microsoft had 6,258, third. Neither Amazon nor Meta was suspended. Amazon has sponsored more than Microsoft since 2017 and now gets roughly three times as many approvals.

The same data shows that about two thirds of Microsoft's approvals went to people already working there. Microsoft says about 6,000 H-1B applications last year were filed, and that 80% were to extend or change the status of existing employees. Amazon, CNBC notes, brought in nearly four times as many H-1B workers who were new to the company.

Simple arithmetic: if the goal is to protect American workers from H-1B substitution, the company with 19,178 approvals is a bigger exposure than the one with 6,258. Either the rule has a criterion nobody has published, or it has a target.

There is also a question of design. PERM exists to test the labor market: advertise the job, show no qualified American is available. If the test is weak, tighten it for every employer, with a public standard and an appeals path. A suspension with no stated duration and no published criterion turns a labor rule into a bargaining chip, and companies facing it have every reason to negotiate in private rather than fix anything.

Evidence and process

Fortune, citing the Seattle Times, reports that the White House has not provided evidence of fraud by Microsoft. Vance himself said Microsoft is “a great American company” and that the administration has “a great relationship with them.” Hours after the announcement, the president gave Microsoft's CEO the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

Verdict

Put American workers first, and write it into law with a test that applies to every employer. A company that lays off thousands while sponsoring thousands should be asked hard questions, and the answers should be public. Suspending eight names by press conference, while the largest sponsor on the list walks free, teaches every boardroom one lesson: the rule is whoever is in the news this week.

A principle that bites only the unlucky is not protection. It is leverage. Who gets called next?