Brad Smith Rebuts JD Vance on H-1B Program, Cites Satya Nadella’s Success

Microsoft President and Vice Chair Brad Smith called Vice President JD Vance’s claims that Microsoft abuses the H-1B program “completely off base,” and warned that restrictions on skilled immigrants could push future engineers to other countries. Smith said the consequences could reach beyond Microsoft. He warned of damage to U.S. technology competitiveness for “more than a generation.”

In an interview published October 15, 2026, Smith said the White House had received inaccurate information about Microsoft’s immigration filings. He made the remarks at the International AI Summit in Dublin, Ireland. “Someone had failed to inform the vice president accurately about our numbers,” he said.

The argument follows an October 8 announcement that the administration would suspend Microsoft and seven other companies from seeking permanent labor certification for foreign workers. The action targets the PERM process, not the ordinary H-1B petition process. That distinction sits at the center of the dispute.

Vance alleged that Microsoft laid off American workers while bringing in foreign employees. Smith disputes the account. The two sides describe the company’s filings differently.

Microsoft says most filings covered current employees

Microsoft said it filed approximately 6,000 H-1B petitions during its previous fiscal year. The company said 80% involved extensions or changes of status for people already working there, rather than new hires. “These were not to hire new people,” its statement said.

The remaining petitions involved people already legally present in the United States who chose to join Microsoft, according to the company. Those workers represented approximately 1% of its U.S. workforce. Microsoft also said, “They are not new arrivals to our country.”

Vance offered a different set of figures. He alleged Microsoft had laid off 6,000 American workers, benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and received or pursued “almost 3,000 green cards.” He said the company had replaced each laid-off American with “one and a half foreign indentured servants.”

The vice president described the visa system as “rife with fraud,” adding that the problem had persisted for “the last several years, probably the last several decades.” He also accused Microsoft of using foreign workers to avoid hiring Americans at higher salaries. Microsoft disputed that allegation.

The order blocks PERM sponsorship, not H-1B petitions

PERM, or Permanent Labor Certification, is an employer-sponsored labor-certification stage used in many employment-based green-card cases. Vance described it as the route that allows workers to stay in the United States, contrasting it with an H-1B visa as a way to enter.

The October 8 action covered Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL. The announcement came from Vance and Keith Sonderling, the United States Secretary of Labor. Sonderling said the department would stop accepting new applications and processing pending applications involving the companies.

“We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies.”

Microsoft said it files petitions only for workers who satisfy the “rigorous standards of this visa category.” The company also said its H-1B workers receive “some of the highest compensation in the tech sector” and that its H-1B wages are “among the highest of all H-1B filings.”

Smith points to pay practices and U.S. hiring

Smith rejected the charge that Microsoft pays foreign workers less than American employees. “It doesn’t matter whether you came on a visa or you’re an American worker, everybody has the same compensation system,” he said.

He also pointed to Microsoft’s domestic hiring. The company hired more than 9,000 U.S.-born workers last year, Smith said, arguing that those hires had been left out of the administration’s criticism. The figure does not resolve the dispute over layoffs or visa filings, but it forms part of his response to Vance’s claim that Microsoft favored foreign workers over Americans.

Smith’s warning focused on future recruitment as well as current employees. He said signals discouraging skilled immigrants could lead the next generation of artificial-intelligence and software engineers to build their careers elsewhere. He said blocking or weakening permanent-residence paths could “cripple” the technology sector.

Nadella’s medal followed the immigration announcement

The administration’s action against Microsoft came only hours before President Donald J. Trump honored Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Nadella was born in India and previously held an H-1B visa. He became Microsoft’s chief executive in February 2014.

Smith drew attention to the timing and to the backgrounds of the medal recipients. “We should consider the fact that when the president honored six Americans with these technology and science medals, five of the six had come to the United States as immigrants.”

He said the companies founded or led by those five people had a combined market value “equal to more than 25% of the market value of the total S&P 500.” Smith urged the administration not to risk the economic contributions of those executives and companies.

Trump praised Nadella at the ceremony as “a key figure in the transformation of Microsoft, revolutionizing the company and empowering businesses, students and consumers from all over the world with some of the most capable software ever built or ever even conceived.”

Vance acknowledged Microsoft was “a great American company,” said the administration had “a great relationship with them,” and recognized that it did “a lot of important things.” He nevertheless said the company would lose access to permanent-residence sponsorship “until they show that they are going to get serious about putting American workers first.”

Asked how long the suspension would last, Vance said it would “last as long as it needs to.” He added that the administration had “a number of tools to suspend it indefinitely.”