Bill Gates, Microsoft founder
Microsoft has been suspended from a special visa program that it had used, according to federal officials, to disadvantage American workers.
“Thanks to an ongoing investigation, we have decided to suspend the PERM program for Microsoft, which means they will no longer be able to take those H-1Bs and apply for permanent resident status within the United States of America,” explained Vice President JD Vance. “Now our message to Microsoft and to any other foreign or domestic corporation is quite simple. We obviously want you to thrive in the United States of America. We want people to invest in the United States of America, particularly the American technology sector. We’re the biggest boosters of your industry. We want you to continue to grow and to employ a lot of people, but we want you to employ American workers. And so our message to Microsoft is, you’re great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”
A wire service reported the program had allowed Microsoft to apply for green cards for workers who come to the U.S. to live and work using H-1B visas.
Critics have challenged a number of such programs catering to huge corporations and foreign workers. The administration has proposed a $100,000 fee for those using the H-1B program, which is on hold while under court review, and $70,000 for a separate, similar, program.
Those programs were intended to provide to American companies the highest level of expertise in various fields. They, however, have been used simply to replace American workers with lower-cost foreigners.
Vance explained the program from which Microsoft now is banned requires companies to advertise jobs in America before giving them to foreigners on the claim of a lack of Americans.
“They’ll put an advertisement in a small-town newspaper. They’ll go out there and say that ‘We have advertised for a position with our company, and nobody is responding to it.’ And they will use that lack of response to then go and replace American workers with what is effectively foreign indentured servants,” Vance said. “There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has used this system more than Microsoft.”
The vice president confirmed Microsoft last year laid off 6,000 American workers but also obtained 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards.
“If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants.”
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[ H/T WorldNetDaily ]
