Brad Smith, Microsoft's president, told an audience that proposed restrictions on green card sponsorship for overseas skilled workers — a policy shift under the current administration — stand to set back the technology industry's ability to recruit international talent, including professionals from India, for a generation.
Speaking on the margins of the International AI Summit held in Dublin, Ireland, Smith took issue with the administration's proposal to block Microsoft and seven other firms from sponsoring green card applications on behalf of skilled workers hired from abroad, according to an interview published in a notable news channel's Decoded newsletter.
In a public statement, Vice President Vance put forward the position that Microsoft had used the H-1B visa programme to pass over domestic workers and bring in overseas hires at reduced cost. Smith disputed those assertions, describing them as having no basis in fact.
Smith noted that the bulk of those green card filings covered workers with lengthy tenures at Microsoft rather than recent additions to the workforce, pointing to extended administrative processing queues as the driving factor. "Unfortunately, it's just because the green card backlog is so long," he told reporters.
For technology workers from India holding H-1B visas at American employers — a group that frequently pursues employer-backed permanent residency as a next step — the outcome of this dispute carries direct practical weight. Sponsorship limitations, if introduced, would affect the longer-term residency pathways of workers who have already spent considerable time moving through the green card queue.
On the question of pay disparities between visa-holding staff and domestic workers, Smith stated that Microsoft applied a uniform compensation framework to all employees, irrespective of their immigration status.
Smith noted that the company had brought on more than 9,000 workers born in the United States during the previous year, contending that this dimension of its employment history had received little attention amid the administration's criticism. He expressed hope that White House officials would take a closer look at what he characterised as a fuller account of the company's hiring and immigration practices before reassessing their position — a record, he said, that Microsoft intended to defend.
Immigrants' contributions to innovation formed another thread in Smith's remarks. He drew attention to the fact that five of the six people awarded technology and science medals by President Donald Trump had arrived in the country as immigrants.
Satya Nadella, who leads Microsoft as its chief executive, once held an H-1B skilled worker visa — a path he shared with a number of other technology executives tracing their roots to India.
Smith raised the prospect that stricter rules on immigration or access could push top-tier AI and software engineering talent toward other nations rather than the United States. He expressed the view that policymakers across the board ought to be attentive to any measures — deliberate or otherwise — that redirect the next generation of leading technical minds away from American shores.
No reply had arrived from a White House spokesperson by the time the news outlet published its request for comment on Smith's remarks.
While voicing reservations about the overall direction of immigration policy, Smith offered measured support for certain steps taken on AI safety — among them, the export restrictions placed on Anthropic's latest AI models. A statement from him described a halt to product releases that the White House had put in place, citing concerns about consumer safety.
The dispute has thrown into relief how unsettled visa and residency pathways remain for skilled workers from India who are working toward long-term professional lives in the United States.
