Vice President JD Vance accused Microsoft of displacing American workers through mass layoffs while relying heavily on the H-1B visa program to hire immigrants. Vance called Big Tech’s approach to replacing Americans “a bullshit story” at an event on Wednesday.
Vice President JD Vance launched a scathing attack on Microsoft Wednesday, questioning the tech giant’s practice of laying off thousands of American workers while simultaneously applying for a significant number of H-1B visas to hire foreign employees. Speaking at a bipartisan event co-hosted by the Hill and Valley Forum, Vance expressed concern over the ethics and economic rationale behind such actions.
“You see some big tech companies where they’ll lay off 9,000 workers, and then they’ll apply for a bunch of overseas visas,” Vance said. “And I sort of wonder; that doesn’t totally make sense to me. That displacement and that math worries me a bit.”
Vance emphasized the administration’s stance on attracting top global talent while prioritizing American workers. “What the president has said, he said very clearly: We want the very best and the brightest to make America their home. We want them to build great companies and so forth. But I don’t want companies to fire 9,000 American workers and then to go and say, ‘We can’t find workers here in America.’ That’s a bullshit story,” Vance asserted.
Microsoft has come under increasing scrutiny for its use of the H-1B visa program, which allows U.S. companies to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. The company announced a wave of layoffs in July, impacting approximately 9,000 employees globally. This follows two earlier rounds of job cuts in May and June, bringing the total number of eliminated positions to nearly 16,000 out of Microsoft’s global headcount of 228,000.
In the wake of these layoffs, allegations surfaced on social media claiming that Microsoft has submitted applications for more than 6,000 H-1B visas since the start of the current fiscal year in October. While this specific figure remains unverified, official data reveals that Microsoft filed 9,491 H-1B applications during the previous fiscal year, all of which received approval.
H-1B visas have become a contentious issue amongst conservatives, including Elon Musk’s infamous meltdown before Trump took office when confronted by MAGA patriots who don’t think cheap H-1B visa labor should replace Americans in the tech sector.
Now, Vance has made clear that the Trump administration favors Americans driving the future of the economy, not foreign replacements.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
