Microsoft hit by US green card restrictions

Guy Kilty (0:01)

A group of US technology companies, including Microsoft, have been barred by the White House from hiring skilled international workers. It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service. I'm Guy Kilty.

Also today, Adidas is suing the Australian fashion brand White Fox over its use of four stripes on some of its clothing. And 30,000 bottles of wine worth more than $5.5 million have been stolen from an Italian winery.

Microsoft and several other technology companies have been banned by the White House from using a visa program which allows them to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency in the US. Vice President JD Vance has accused the tech firms of abusing the system. Samira Hussain reports from New York.

Samira Hussain (0:51)

The Permanent Labor Certification Program, or PERM, allows employers to sponsor qualified foreign workers for permanent residence. It's unlike the H-1B program, which affords skilled foreign workers a temporary work visa.

In making the announcement, Vice President JD Vance singled out Microsoft for being the biggest abuser of the program.

JD Vance (1:13)

Microsoft 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. 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. Now, that is a scandalous system that we've allowed in this country for far too long. But thanks to the work of this task force and thanks to the empowerment of the present United States, we're going to stop it.

Samira Hussain (1:43)

In response, the tech company said the vast majority of its employees in the United States are Americans. Now, the move by the Trump administration is really meant to crack down on companies hiring foreign workers and paying them less than their American counterparts. But companies say suspending these kinds of programs could make it more difficult for them to recruit foreign talent.

Guy Kilty (2:07)

Tamsin DC Weinstein is a future of work strategist based in New York. I asked her what impact this could have on the US technology sector.

Tamsin DC Weinstein (2:14)

I think it's a really interesting timing, first of all. And I think it's more of a kind of propaganda message that's going out at the moment.

So we're only a few weeks before the US midterms. The president's obviously slightly behind in the polls. And using a company like Microsoft, and the companies that is named, have sent a really big message to the American people, that they're taking this massive action on jobs, and that they're keeping jobs American. Now, whether this will actually follow through, I think we need to wait and see. Because if you think about recently, he's honored a lot of tech innovation leaders, and the majority of them aren't US born citizens. So we need innovation, and we need people from all over the world to work everywhere, because that's what sparks the innovation. I don't actually believe in practice it will hold, but we'll wait and see.

Guy Kilty (3:10)

How reliant are the big tech companies at the moment on recruiting workers from overseas?

Tamsin DC Weinstein (3:15)

Well, massively. Now, I don't know the figures off the top of my head on how many workers in each of the big tech companies are foreign nationals. But obviously, there's very specialist roles within a lot of them. If you look at the big players, if you look at Frontier Labs, if you look at big tech, there's very specialist roles. And to stay ahead of the game, they need the best people in the business. And sometimes they're not in your locality, and that's just human nature. And actually, there's nothing wrong with bringing in people from abroad to keep your company ahead of the game. Now, obviously, the president's big message constantly is that he wants America to win the AI war, as he calls it. Some people call it a race, some people call it a war. He wants to win it. He's very dead set on winning it. And to do that, they need the best in the business. And if they're not in America, then they have to bring them in.

So I think if this does go forward and it does continue, and there is a ban for these companies, they will really struggle.

Guy Kilty (4:10)

Tamsin DC Weinstein. Now, the Australian data center company, Firmus, has scrapped its plans for what would have been one of the country's biggest ever stock market listings. Randeep Samal is a fund manager at M&G Investments. And Randeep, Firmus is backed by NVIDIA and had been looking to raise around $5 billion. So why has it decided that now isn't the right time to go public?