Microsoft barred from sponsoring foreign workers for US residency

Before the fee increase, the government charged $215 to register for the H-1B visa lottery and a $780 base fee for employers sponsoring visa applicants. More than 400,000 such visas were approved last year.

While Indians have been the biggest recipients of H-1B visas and the new restrictions target many of the largest outsourcing groups, the impact is likely to be small as the route from H-1B to permanent residency has been out of reach for most Indians, given a decades-long backlog.

Nearly 1 million people from India are waiting for employment-based permanent residency as of December last year, according to an August study by the non-profit National Foundation for American Policy.

Nasscom, the Indian IT services lobbying group, said the number of employees transitioning to permanent residency through Perm was “relatively limited” as Indian tech companies had “significantly reduced their dependence on H-1B visas.”

In his comments on Thursday, Vance said the visas were helping companies undercut US workers. He claimed some H-1B holders were earning between $20,000 and $48,000 less than US citizens hired for similar positions.

Amazon, the biggest user of H-1B visas, was not mentioned in the press conference. But Vance singled out Microsoft, saying it “laid off last year 6,000 American workers at the same time the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards,” referring to US permanent residency.

The White House on Thursday also announced a fraud investigation into the use of J-1 student visas at nine American universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.

Microsoft, whose shares dropped more than 1 percent following the announcement, said the visa applications mentioned by Vance were largely “to extend or change the status” of existing employees.

“Microsoft only files H-1B petitions for those who meet the rigorous standards of this visa category,” the company said. “We pay our employees some of the highest compensation in the tech sector, and our wages are among the highest of all H-1B filings.”

At a separate event on Thursday, the Trump administration gave Microsoft’s Indian-born chief executive, Satya Nadella, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

He was honored alongside South African-born Elon Musk and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, who was born in Taiwan.

Vance said there was no contradiction between the two announcements.

“Our message to Microsoft is: ‘You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers.’”

Additional reporting by Michael Stott in New Delhi

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