US Vice President JD Vance has defended his administration’s decision to suspend major technology companies from the employment-based green card programme, and he has hit back at Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal for criticising the move.
In a pointed response on Friday, Vance challenged Jayapal’s remarks on the suspension, writing, “’Socialism’ apparently means fighting like hell to ensure mega-corporations have a never-ending flow of cheap labour”.
Jayapal, a Democrat who serves on the House Immigration Subcommittee and previously held an H-1B visa, said the Trump administration’s move undermines legal immigration and threatens America’s ability to innovate.
Jayapal calls suspension an attack on legal immigration
In a post on X, Jayapal said the decision was particularly significant given her role as the top Democrat on the Immigration Subcommittee, her experience as an H-1B visa holder and her representation of tens of thousands of Microsoft employees.
“This is a crucial issue for me as the top Democrat on the Immigration Subcommittee, the only member of Congress to have actually had an H-1B visa, and the Representative for tens of thousands of Microsoft workers,” she wrote.
She accused the administration of repeatedly restricting legal routes for immigrants to contribute their skills to the United States, describing the latest move as another such attempt.
Jayapal said the Permanent Labour Certification (PERM) programme serves as the first step towards an employment-based green card for many workers. She added that the programme establishes a process designed to ensure immigration benefits the US economy without harming American jobs.
“Our economy, our communities, and our families depend on immigrants in many sectors, including the tech sector, and heavy-handed attacks like this only hurt efforts to build a strong, stable, and diverse base of workers who have legal pathways to come and be in the United States while also protecting U.S. workers from unscrupulous employers,” she said.
“You don’t fix a broken immigration system by taking a hammer to legal immigration,” Jayapal added.
She also said Microsoft had consistently advocated comprehensive immigration reforms to modernise what she described as an antiquated system and expand legal pathways for people from across the world to work in the US and reunite with their families.
“Targeting Microsoft or the PERM program in this way simply undermines legal immigration and weakens America’s ability to innovate,” she said.
Vance previously described H-1B workers as ‘indentured servants’
Vance previously criticised the use of H-1B visas at a news conference on visa fraud, describing workers brought into the US under the programme as “indentured servants”.
“If you are working as an H-1B visa in the United States of America, you’re earning $20,000 less than an American citizen hired in the same position. If you were brought in by one of these foreign outsourcing firms, you’re making $48,000 less than an American citizen in a similar position,” he said.
He argued that companies benefited financially by hiring foreign workers at lower wages while laying off American employees.
“So, I’m sure that everybody here understands the game that is being played. You bring in indentured servants from outside the country, you lay off American workers and, if you’re a corporation, you make a ton of money by under cutting the wages of American workers, replacing them with people who frankly shouldn’t be in the United States of America to begin with,” Vance said.
US suspends major IT firms from green card programme
The dispute follows an announcement by US Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling that the government was suspending some of the world’s largest IT outsourcing firms from the Permanent Labour Certification Programme.
The companies named included Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. The US Labour Department attributed the suspensions to multiple active federal investigations. Technology majors Microsoft and Adobe were also suspended from the programme.
Sonderling said the companies had collectively sought millions of foreign workers and received hundreds of thousands of H-1B visa approvals and permanent labour certifications.
“Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers. They received over 230,000 H-1 B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labour certifications that’s hundred and thousands of jobs that were taken from a American workers,” the Labour Secretary said.
US proposes new fees for foreign students
The announcement came a day after the US Department of Homeland Security proposed new fees for F-1 non-immigrant students seeking to participate in Optional Practical Training (OPT).
The department described the proposed measures as an effort to protect American workers and strengthen the integrity of the US immigration system.
(with ANI inputs)
