Brad Smith, who serves as Microsoft's president, expressed the view that new restrictions on green card sponsorship for skilled foreign workers — introduced under the Trump administration — carry a risk of eroding the technology sector's competitive base and redirecting talent to other countries.
Speaking on the margins of the International AI Summit held in Dublin, Ireland, Smith told a prominent television outlet that claims made by US Vice President JD Vance — that Microsoft had exploited the H-1B visa scheme to bring in overseas workers at reduced pay — did not reflect the reality of how the programme operated.
The comments arrived within days of a policy announcement barring Microsoft and seven other companies from sponsoring green card applications for skilled foreign-born workers. Smith told a broadcast outlet that allowing top-tier AI and software engineering talent to gravitate toward other countries — whether by design, accident, or some other path — was a prospect the industry needed to take seriously.
Vance put forward the claim that Microsoft turns to the H-1B visa scheme as a way to fill positions without paying the higher salaries that domestic workers would command. In a statement, Smith pushed back against the allegations, calling them entirely without merit.
Smith noted that the bulk of Microsoft's green card filings covered people already on the payroll rather than incoming hires, pointing to the extended wait times built into the US permanent residency process as the underlying reason — a queue so drawn-out, he added, that it effectively drives the volume of applications on its own.
On the question of pay disparities between foreign-born staff and their American counterparts, Smith stated that Microsoft applied a uniform compensation framework across its workforce, without regard to any individual's immigration status. Pointing to a figure the administration had not addressed, he noted that more than 9,000 workers born in the United States joined Microsoft's payroll over the previous year, and stated that the company stood behind its hiring record.
At stake for technology workers from India holding H-1B visas in the United States — many of whom later pursue employer-backed pathways toward lawful permanent residence — is a set of outcomes tied directly to how this disagreement gets resolved. Holders of an H-1B visa are authorised to work in the United States on behalf of a sponsoring employer, whereas a green card confers permanent residency.
Employer sponsorship limits stand to disrupt the longer-term residency pathways of workers caught up in the change, with those already queued in the green card backlog facing the sharpest uncertainty.
Smith drew attention to the role of foreign-born individuals in driving American technological progress, noting that five of the six recipients of presidential medals for science and technology under Trump had moved to the United States from elsewhere, and urging that this pipeline of talent be protected.
While voicing reservations about the administration's approach to immigration, Smith also pointed to certain AI-related policies as worthy of support — among them, export restrictions placed on Anthropic's latest AI models.
