Vice President JD Vance used a Thursday press conference to announce that the Trump administration is suspending Microsoft, Adobe and six major IT outsourcing firms from the federal pipeline that leads to employer-sponsored green cards — and he aimed his sharpest words at the company whose CEO President Trump was scheduled to honor with a national medal the very same day.

Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, standing alongside Vance, said the Department of Labor will stop accepting new permanent labor certification applications — known as PERM — and freeze all pending ones tied to Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini, according to Al Jazeera and TechCrunch. PERM certification is typically the first formal step an employer takes toward sponsoring a foreign worker for permanent U.S. residency.

"Foreign Indentured Servants"

Vance accused Microsoft specifically of gaming the system, claiming the company laid off 6,000 American workers last year while simultaneously obtaining 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards for foreign hires.

"OUR MESSAGE TO MICROSOFT IS: YOU'RE A GREAT AMERICAN COMPANY, BUT YOU'VE GOT TO HIRE GREAT AMERICAN WORKERS."

Vance added that companies "cannot lay off American workers and replace them with foreign indentured servants." The Labor Department said it had uncovered billions of dollars in alleged visa fraud tied to the programs, though officials did not detail the specific case against each named company. Sonderling cast the move as a worker-protection measure, saying the administration is "protecting the American worker."

Vance also announced the administration is investigating nine universities — including Harvard, Yale, Stanford and MIT — over alleged abuse of the J-1 exchange-visitor visa program, which he claimed undercuts wages for American academics.

Microsoft pushed back within hours. In a statement, the company said roughly 80% of the approximately 6,000 H-1B applications it filed last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of workers already employed by Microsoft, not new arrivals, and that new-hire filings amounted to about 1% of its U.S. workforce. "We believe in the strength and talent of the American workforce," the company said. Adobe did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The timing landed awkwardly for the administration: Trump was scheduled to present Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation hours after Vance's announcement. The suspensions also extend a pattern the Labor Department has pursued since spring, when it froze PERM filings for smaller firms amid separate fraud probes — but Thursday marked the first time two of tech's biggest names were swept directly into the crackdown, with the midterms five weeks away and immigration polling as a top voter concern.