Vance suspends Microsoft from a green card program to crack down on alleged fraud

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday announced the suspension of tech giants, Microsoft and Adobe, from a green card program -- effectively blocking the companies from sponsoring H-1B visa workers for permanent residency green cards.

The suspension is from the PERM program -- a certification that allows employers to hire a foreign employee to work permanently in the U.S.

Vance singled out Microsoft, accusing the company of fraud.

"So if the H-1B visa is how the people get into the country, the PERM program is how they stay in the United States to begin with," Vance said. "Now there has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused the system more than Microsoft."

In a statement to ABC News, Microsoft said it "succeeds as a global technology leader by developing the world’s best technology workforce. We do this by strengthening this country’s talent pipeline, hiring American workers, and attracting the best talent from around the world."

Critics of the PERM program have said it allows companies to recruit foreign workers, taking away jobs from Americans. Vance alleged Microsoft employees were laid off -- later replaced by "foreign indentured servants" who "are earning wages that are far below the average for American citizens."

"So, in the last year, Microsoft -- and I want to be clear about the data here, so let me check this -- but Microsoft laid off last year 6,000 American workers," Vance said. "At the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards."

"In other words, if you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants."

Microsoft said in a statement that "the vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans."

It also pushed back on Vance's comments, saying it "only files H-1B petitions for those who meet the rigorous standards of this visa category."

"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. We pay our H-1B employees the same as any other employees doing comparable work," the statement continued.

The criticism of Microsoft came hours before President Donald Trump awarded Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella the Medal of Technology and Innovation during an event at the Institute of Peace on Thursday.

Trump lauded Nadella at the ceremony, saying he has been "a key figure in the transformation of Microsoft, revolutionizing the company and empowering businesses, students and consumers from all over the world with some of the most capable software ever built or ever even conceived."

Vance acknowledged the contradiction of honoring Microsoft's CEO the same day as his announcement.

"Microsoft is a great American company, and we have a great relationship with them. They do a lot of important things," Vance said. "So we're going to continue to support Microsoft and have a great relationship with Microsoft, but we're also going to deny them the ability to apply for these permanent residencies until they show that they are going to get serious about putting American workers first."

ABC News has reached out to Adobe for comment.

Asked how long the suspension will be in place, Vance said it will "last as long as it needs to" and added that the administration has "a number of tools to suspend it indefinitely" if needed.

Vance, who has been asked to lead the administration’s Anti-Fraud Task Force, also criticized the H-1B visa program as a whole, saying it has become "rife with fraud" in recent years.

"The H-1B visa program is meant to allow companies to bring in really the best of the best from outside the United States of America for positions that are completely impossible to fill with American workers. Unfortunately, the program has become rife with fraud over the last several years, probably the last several decades," Vance said.

Attorney General Todd Blanche also chimed in about the issue of "foreign labor favoritism," promising that companies will be investigated if they "discriminate against an American worker in favor of someone on the other side of the world," with Blanche saying this "violate[s] the trust of the federal government and the American people."

"The Department of Justice, my department, is actively investigating companies that do this that favor foreign workers over the American people,” Blanche said.

Inspector General of Labor Anthony D'Esposito also announced that the Department of Labor is conducting a "historic investigation into the J-1 visa fraud involving nine major American universities: Pitt, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Brown, UC Davis, CaltTech, Arizona State, and MIT," with investigations already underway, he said.

"If an American university is breaking the law to save a dollar, while exposing American research to a foreign adversary, that is not academic excellence. It's institutional betrayal," D'Esposito said.