Trump honours Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as Vance suspends green card visas

President Donald Trump presented Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation on Thursday, hours after Vice President JD Vance suspended the company from a key green card programme and accused it of visa fraud.

The dual developments on 8 October 2026 exposed a sharp contradiction at the heart of the administration's policy, celebrating immigrant tech leaders while executing an aggressive crackdown on the foreign workers who power their businesses.

Why did JD Vance target Microsoft?

At a press conference on Thursday, Vance announced that Microsoft was suspended from the PERM programme, which allows employers to sponsor skilled foreign workers on H-1B visas for permanent US residency.

Vance, who leads an administration task force on immigration fraud, accused the Washington-based company of exploiting visa rules while laying off domestic staff.

"Our message to Microsoft is: You're a great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers," Vance said. He alleged that Microsoft dismissed 6,000 US employees last year while obtaining roughly 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards.

"You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants," Vance added.

How did Microsoft respond to the allegations?

Microsoft, which employs 223,000 people globally, quickly rejected the administration's description of its recruitment.

The company said in a statement that the vast majority of its US workforce are Americans. It explained that of the roughly 6,000 H-1B applications it submitted during the last fiscal year, 80 per cent were to extend or change the legal status of existing staff, rather than to import new hires.

"These were not to hire new people," Microsoft said, adding that the remaining minority of applications involved people who were already legally in the US when they were hired.

The company also defended its pay practices, stating that it pays its H-1B employees the same wages as domestic workers performing comparable roles, with salaries that are "among the highest of all H-1B filings."

An administration of mixed messages

Despite the vice president's sharp words, Trump was effusive in his praise of Nadella at the White House awards ceremony later that afternoon.

Presented during the "A New Golden Age" summit at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, Trump credited Nadella with reshaping Microsoft and pushing it into artificial intelligence.

"Satya, we are honoured to give you the National Medal of Technology and Innovation," Trump said. "It is so well deserved."

The ceremony brought together several other high-profile tech executives. Musk, who has repaired his relationship with Trump since leaving his post at the Department of Government Efficiency, received the National Medal of Science alongside Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su.

The awards highlighted an awkward reality for the administration’s nationalist economic platform: five of the six executives honoured on Thursday are foreign-born. Nadella immigrated from India, Musk from South Africa, Brin from Russia, and Huang and Su from Taiwan. Only Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell was born in the US.

White House spokesperson Liz Huston defended the selections, saying the recipients "are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation."

When asked about the apparent clash between the president's praise and his own crackdown, Vance said the administration still intended to maintain a strong relationship with Microsoft.