'These were not to hire new people': Microsoft says amid Trump administration's visa fraud allegations

Microsoft has responded after the Trump administration suspended the company from the Labor Department's PERM program, which allows companies to seek permanent residency for foreign workers. Microsoft has denied the US government's fraud claims. (Representative) Vice President JD Vance accused Microsoft of using the system to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. Microsoft has disputed those claims and provided details about its H-1B visa applications. What did Microsoft say? In its statement, Microsoft said it believes in the strength and talent of the American workforce. It said the vast majority of its employees in the US are Americans. The company said it looks forward to giving the administration more information. Also read: 7 Indian tech firms rank among top 50 US employers with approved H-1Bs; 5 named in Labor Dept. probe What do the numbers say, as per Microsoft? According to Microsoft, it filed about 6,000 H-1B visa applications in the last fiscal year. It said 80% of these were to extend or change the status of existing employees. It said these were not to hire new people. Microsoft said the rest of the filings for new employees were for people who were already legally in the US and chose to come work for the company. It said these equal only 1% of its US workforce. It added that they are not new arrivals to the country. Microsoft said it files H-1B petitions only for people who meet the strict 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," Microsoft said. "We pay our H-1B employees the same as any other employees doing comparable work." Here is the full statement. Also read: Why is OpenAI's annualized revenue $20 billion below earlier estimates? What did the US accuse Microsoft of? According to CNN, the Trump administration is suspending Microsoft and some other companies from seeking permanent residency for foreign workers hired through H-1B visas. The US accused the companies of using the system to replace American workers with cheaper foreign workers. Vice President JD Vance said Microsoft has been barred indefinitely from the Labor Department's PERM program. He said the decision followed an investigation by the anti-fraud task force he leads. The investigation found Microsoft laid off about 6,000 American workers last year while employing around 6,300 non-citizens who had come to the US on H-1B visas. Vance said H-1B is how people enter the US and PERM is how they stay. "There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused the system more than Microsoft," Vance said, per CNN. Officials alleged that Microsoft gave wrong details about its needs while applying for green cards. They said the program is only for workers with "hyper-specialized" skills, and accused the company of using it to replace skilled American workers with cheaper immigrants. "The fraud is that they're making representations when applying for this program that are fundamentally illegitimate and therefore ultimately illegal," Vance said.