WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump planned to celebrate tech billionaires such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday, only to get upstaged hours before the event when Vice President JD Vance announced that Microsoft was being suspended from a program that allows companies to apply for green cards for skilled foreign workers with H-1B visas.
The crackdown on Microsoft came under Vance's purview as the head of a fraud task force, but the targeting
revealed the tension between the companies powering U.S. economic growth and the administration's efforts to reduce immigration that it says has come at the expense of American workers.
“Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” Vance told a news conference. He said the company had abused the visa system. “You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”
Vance said Microsoft last year fired 6,000 U.S. workers but also obtained 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. The tech company based in Redmond, Washington, has 223,000 employees worldwide. Microsoft has not commented on the allegations.
Of the six tech leaders slated to receive an award from the president, five are immigrants.
The president will hand out the National Medal of Science to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Lisa Su, CEO of the semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices. Each of them was born overseas — South Africa for Musk, Russia for Brin and Taiwan for Huang and Su.
Trump will also give the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Nadella and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, who has sponsored the government’s special investment accounts for children known as Trump Accounts. Dell was born in Texas, while Nadella immigrated from India.
The honors — part of a summit celebrating a new “golden age” of science — build on Trump’s already lavish praise toward the entrepreneurs for their work accelerating the development of artificial intelligence technology, which he refers to as super intelligence. He has increasingly counted on the technology to deliver on his economic agenda and pushed for the U.S. to lead its development while resisting calls for guardrails that he worries will stifle growth.
Past winners of the National Medal of Science, which was established in 1959, have mainly been academics and research scientists rather than business leaders. The ceremony honoring the business leaders overlaps with the awarding this week, separately, of Nobel Prizes.
The tech leaders have been frequent visitors to the White House in recent weeks. Musk, Huang and Su sat at the head table with Trump at the lavish state dinner for China’s leader, Xi Jinping. Also attending were Brin, Nadella and Dell, who on Wednesday was in the Oval Office to talk about Trump Accounts.
Last week, Huang and Musk were among the tech leaders at the White House to sign a voluntary agreement on developing AI after recent models raised national security and safety concerns.
With November's midterm elections less than a month away, Trump has also sought to drive home to voters how investment in AI data centers and related computer equipment has helped to boost a record-high stock market, swelling the net worth of wealthier Americans. But the message hasn't always landed. Polls show bipartisan concerns about AI developing too quickly, and high costs for everyday items like gas and groceries are dampening the economic outlook for many Americans.
Vance also said that several universities including Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology should be investigated for visa fraud. Huang and Brin have degrees from Stanford and Su has multiple degrees from MIT.
The White House praised the contributions of Thursday's honorees.
“These recipients are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation,” said Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson.
