The White House is expanding its campaign against international workers, targeting elite work and study visa holders with restrictions and a new investigation. On Thursday, the Trump administration announced an investigation into whether Stanford, Caltech, UC Davis and other universities across the country have been abusing a special visa used by academics and international students to conduct research and work in the U.S. It is also suspending Microsoft, Adobe and six other tech companies from how they sponsor employees who are in the country under a high-skilled worker visa program. The White House’s concern is that schools and companies are rushing to recruit people from outside the United States. The moves unsettled Silicon Valley executives and California educators, who see easy access to the world’s smartest, hardest-working people as one of America’s greatest competitive advantages. Vice President JD Vance said the universities under investigation are abusing J-1 visas to bring in students and researchers from abroad. International scholars then accept jobs and grants that could go to Americans. “They are overusing these visas,” he said. “They are being used to depress the salaries of American graduate students and researchers, and this simply has to stop.” Harvard, Yale, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, Arizona State and MIT will also be investigated. Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito said citations have been handed out and that “no one is going to get a free pass because their name is plastered on an expensive building.” Many universities have buildings named after foreign donors. While most of the companies targeted by the tech visa restriction were Indian, Vance criticized Microsoft. “Unfortunately, there has been no company in the United States that has abused this system more than Microsoft,” Vance told reporters at a White House news conference. Vance said the company has abused the permanent labor certification program, which he said has allowed Microsoft to hire international talent who are then paid less to replace American workers. The new development suspends Microsoft from applying for green cards for workers who come to the US on H-1B visas and then apply to become permanent residents. American tech giants have relied on the H-1B visa program for decades to attract thousands of skilled foreign workers they cannot find locally. Critics have accused the program of being riddled with fraud and abuse. The administration’s power move came on the same day that President Trump awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to two prime examples of international talent who came to the United States on student and work visas: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Tesla’s Elon Musk. Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini were also on the list of companies that will no longer be able to apply for permanent residency status for their H-1B employees. Microsoft defended its use of the H-1B visa and said in a statement that it looked forward to sharing additional information with the administration. In a post, it said that of the thousands of H-1B visa applications it filed in the last fiscal year, 80% were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees. “They only represent 1% of our American workforce. They are not newcomers to our country,” the company said. “Microsoft only files H-1B petitions for those who meet the rigorous standards of this visa category.” There is a limit of 85,000 H-1B visas issued in a fiscal year, and they are selected through a lottery system. Last year, Microsoft was the third-largest beneficiary of the program, with 6,258 H-1B visas, according to data from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Amazon topped the list, employing more than 13,000 H-1 B visa holders; Adobe had 777 applications approved. Thursday’s announcement has caused confusion among workers and technology companies. Immigration attorneys note that the action is not a blanket suspension of green card applications for all employers, but rather a specific freeze of the Permanent Labor Certification program for the eight corporations mentioned. H-1B advocates point out that Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies are founded or run by immigrants, and efforts to thwart the H-1B have already begun to stifle the flow of talent and new business creation. “It’s probably just going to hurt some companies and the best and brightest that are coming here,” said Devashish Mitra, an economics professor at Syracuse University. “It’s like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” J-1 investigations follow other actions, making it difficult for international students to come to American campuses. This year, the Department of Homeland Security said it wanted to end a “duration of status” visa policy that allows students to stay in the United States until the completion of their programs and limit stays to four years. A federal judge blocked the change and the government is appealing. The Trump administration also proposed charging universities $70,000 per student for optional practical training, which allows international students to work in their fields of study for a limited number of years after graduating. Students now pay about $500. In a statement, a Stanford spokesperson said the campus “complies with all applicable visa laws, including those related to J-1 visas. We will cooperate with the investigation.” A UC Davis spokesperson said the university “carefully complies with all federal visa laws and regulations and looks forward to working with our federal partners to confirm compliance.” 2025, compared to 301,694 in 2024, according to data from the State Department. Trainees and temporary summer workers, such as au pairs and summer camp counselors, also use the visa to enter the U.S. Most were not in universities, and most had summer jobs. The Trump administration’s crackdown has begun to discourage students from coming to the US, and experts expect a drop in their enrollment when data for 2025 is released next month. New academic researchers fell 27% from 2024 to 17,622, about half of the total in 2015. The majority of new researchers in 2025 came from China, followed by South Korea and India. California attracted the most researchers, 3,211. It ranked second behind New York for all new J-1s in 2025, with 23,167. The State Department reviews applicants and approves sponsors. Researchers can stay up to five years. Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff of government relations at the American Council on Education, said she had found little information about what the new investigations would cover. But he said the federal government already has tools “to identify fraud, both in granting the visa and in tracking the person through the Department of Homeland Security.” “I think all of these things are focused on bringing fewer international students to the United States, and we have been seeing that impact,” he said, expecting “a big drop in our international enrollment this year, given everything that’s going on.”
