Microsoft dumps thousands of American workers in favor of cheaper foreign techies

It often begins with a last-minute calendar invite – mandatory, with no explanation.

For many workers in the tech industry, this has become a familiar signal. As the video meeting starts, hundreds of employees log in silently. Soon, human resources and legal representatives appear. The message is read. The decision is final.

Employees are informed their positions are being eliminated.

There is no opportunity for dialogue. Years of service are sometimes brought to an end in just a few minutes.

Many of these employees had stayed late, worked weekends, mentored new team members and remained committed through difficult cycles. The meeting typically ends with a bland, impersonal, standard statement of appreciation.

Executives often describe these actions as necessary for business reasons, with public statements citing over-hiring, inflation, economic uncertainty or the need for cost control. Workers are told the decision is not personal – just business.

Still, for those impacted, the effects are significant. Many support families, carry student loans or are primary earners in their households. They return to a job market where opportunities are limited, especially when layoffs affect entire departments or industries at once.

What many laid-off employees don’t realize is that the roles they once held may not have been permanently eliminated. Instead, those positions are sometimes quietly reassigned, reclassified or reopened, often without notice or transparency.

The reassignment pattern: Layoffs followed by visa hiring

While U.S.-based Microsoft workers have faced multiple waves of layoffs, including a new round expected this week targeting the Xbox division, the company has already cut over 10,000 employees across various divisions, including 6,000 in May alone, and hundreds more in June. In its defense, Microsoft claims its 2025 job cuts affect less than 1% of its global workforce.

Between May and June, Microsoft laid off 2,300 employees in Washington alone, including 817 software engineers, according to official WARN Act filings. But during the same period, Microsoft submitted 6,327 H-1B visa requests for software engineer roles matching the same job titles and location as those affected by the layoffs.

In total, the company filed 14,181 Labor Condition Applications, or LCAs – formal applications required to sponsor foreign workers for temporary employment visas, such as the H-1B – allowing them to work in U.S.-based jobs that are typically held by American workers. This made Microsoft the third-largest filer of foreign labor requests in the U.S., behind only NVIDIA and Amazon.

According to U.S. Department of Labor data, nearly 82% of Microsoft’s new foreign workers were tagged at wage levels well below the median salary for those occupations. Howard University professor Ron Hira, a long-time critic of the program, observed that employers frequently pay the minimum they legally have to when utilizing the foreign guest worker program.

“Prevailing wages are set far below the market price, inviting employers to exploit the program. The result is that most of the roughly 600,000 H-1B workers are paid below market price. This is an unfair outcome for U.S. and H-1B workers alike: U.S. workers’ wages are undercut and H-1B workers are underpaid.”

Hira, author of “Outsourcing America,” co-authored an article documenting why “H-1B wage rules need an overhaul.”

In addition to undercutting wages or laying off Americans to bring in more foreign workers, current U.S. law does not require companies to prove they tried to hire Americans first. They also aren’t obligated to notify laid-off employees if the same jobs are reopened through visa programs. Yet these practices are completely legal under existing immigration rules and occur with little oversight, no transparency and no protection for American workers.

Strategic shifts

The bottom line is that behind every announcement of “strategic realignment” is an American now facing uncertain days ahead, and often with no clear path back. For the American employees on the receiving end of layoff notices, the impact is deeply personal. They’re not just losing a paycheck, they’re losing healthcare, retirement contributions and a sense of security. That’s why Microsoft’s actions, while legal, remain anything but transparent. Most employees aren’t told similar jobs are being filled through H-1B visa requests. For those still employed, the silence only adds to their anxiety. With little information about how decisions are made or who might be next, many are left quietly wondering if they’re just one reorg away from losing everything too.

Alongside its growing number of foreign labor filings, Microsoft has continued to expand operations overseas, especially in India. In January 2025, the company announced a $3 billion investment into India’s AI and cloud infrastructure over the next two years, alongside a plan to train 10 million Indian workers in AI-related skills by 2030.

While Microsoft has laid off thousands of employees in the United States, the country where the company was founded and still earns the majority of its revenue, executives offered a different message abroad. In January 2025, the company confirmed that no layoffs were planned in India. “For all of India, more jobs are being created,” said Puneet Chandok, president of Microsoft India and South Asia, during a January 2025 interview.

As Microsoft expands its commitments to the Indian government and workforce, its 14,181 H-1B visa requests reflect deepening ties with India-based firms. Notably, every single application was filed through Integreon Managed Solutions (INDIA) PVT LTD. This raises serious questions about how many of these roles are being reserved for Indian nationals, especially as American employees are laid off. With little transparency, it becomes increasingly difficult for U.S.-based workers to know whether their jobs are being relocated overseas or quietly filled at the very desks they once occupied.

A shifting workforce

These trends point to a larger shift in how companies like Microsoft manage their workforce. As layoffs hit U.S.-based employees, the company continues to scale up international hiring, infrastructure and talent development, especially in India. At the same time, the number of H-1B visa filings for foreign workers continues to grow, often for roles very similar to those recently cut in the U.S.

All of this remains legal under existing U.S. labor and immigration policies. There are no requirements to prioritize American workers, no obligations to disclose when jobs are offshored and no systems in place to alert laid-off employees that similar roles may be refilled by cheaper foreign workers.

For those affected, the result is a widening gap between where tech jobs are created and where they are lost, between American workers being displaced and foreign labor pipelines quietly expanding. What remains to be seen is whether this pattern will continue unchecked, or if policymakers and the public will reevaluate what it means to protect domestic opportunity in a global economy where American companies are increasingly driven by cost-cutting at any price, quiet partnerships and the abandonment of loyalty to their own countrymen.

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