“Your journey here ends today.”
That was the message one Microsoft employee said she received when her job was abruptly terminated. Another described the experience as “paralyzing, refreshing emails, staring at the screen, heart racing with every ping.” A third added, “There’s been speculation for a while, but the scale of today’s news still hits hard.”
Across social media and professional networks like LinkedIn, thousands of American workers have shared that they’ve been laid off by Microsoft, marking what has become one of the largest workforce reductions in the company’s history.
But their job titles reveal a deeper pattern: Many of the same roles are now appearing in Microsoft’s filings with the U.S. Department of Labor for H-1B foreign workers.
Earlier this week, WorldNetDaily reported that Microsoft announced major layoffs impacting workers in Washington and California, even as the company continued pursuing thousands of new foreign hires through the H-1B visa program. Since then, the number of layoffs has continued to rise, raising concerns that what began as cost-cutting may now reflect an even broader – and troubling – shift in Microsoft’s labor strategy.
As its new fiscal year began on July 1, Microsoft confirmed an additional 9,000 would be laid off companywide, including 830 cuts in Washington state. Combined with earlier waves in May and June, Microsoft has now laid off more than 15,000 workers since spring, including more than 3,100 in Washington, home to its Redmond headquarters. Although the company previously stated the cuts were meant to “flatten management,” publicly available data shows that only 17% of impacted roles in Redmond were classified as managerial.
Lobbying for immigration reforms during workforce reductions
While those layoffs were unfolding publicly, another lesser-known development was playing out in Washington, D.C.
In April, just weeks before the May layoffs began, Microsoft filed a federal lobbying disclosure, reporting $2.35 million in lobbying expenditures, much of it directed at the federal Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security – the very agencies responsible for overseeing visa certifications and employment eligibility. Among the listed priorities: “high-skilled immigration reforms,” a long-standing policy goal often associated with expanding access to the H-1B visa program.
This is not a new strategy for Microsoft. In 2023, the company filed federal WARN Act (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notices disclosing 3,426 layoffs across its California and Washington offices.
During the same period, Microsoft requested 14,020 H-1B visa workers, plus another 708 through third-party staffing firms.
The company also spent $5.09 million lobbying in 2023, $4.52 million of which was aimed directly at the departments of Labor and Homeland Security on issues related to “High Skilled immigration and Immigration reform.”
Demand for foreign workers vs. job creation
Microsoft has consistently maintained that the U.S. does not issue enough H-1B visas to meet labor market demands. On its lobbying blog, the company states: “The number of H-1B visas remains very limited. Congress sets a limit on the number of H-1B visas that can be issued each year. Demand far exceeds supply.”
While it is accurate that U.S. law caps new H-1B visas at 85,000 per year, Microsoft’s own hiring data offers additional perspective. From 2021 to 2024, the company submitted H-1B requests at a staggering rate of 5.17 for every one net new job it created in the U.S.
Based on this pattern, Microsoft’s claims of a lack of available skilled workers appear less about unmet labor needs and more about the company’s inability to replace its existing workforce at scale due to the legal limits imposed by the H-1B visa cap. This imbalance raises further questions regarding how the program is being applied, whether to support innovation or to enable a deeper transformation of the labor force.
While Microsoft continues to press for expanded visa access, the real-time experiences of its displaced American employees offer a revealing counterpoint.
Skilled Americans replaced in their own country
Across social media, laid-off Microsoft employees are responding with resilience, many beginning to network and apply for new jobs within hours of receiving termination notices. Their profiles show years of experience, advanced degrees and a clear readiness to work.
Microsoft has stated that it hires foreign workers to “bring specially-needed skill sets” to their “U.S. operations and to fill roles when qualified American workers are not available.” However, the juxtaposition of recent massive American layoffs and simultaneous H-1B filings paints a more troubling picture. Indeed, a review of Microsoft’s active labor condition applications reveals that many of the job titles match those previously held by recently displaced U.S. professionals, raising questions as to whether competent American workers were truly unavailable for these roles.
The impact of these layoffs and hiring decisions is showing up in the form of disrupted careers and urgent job searchers on the part of many Americans. The pattern is unmistakable: U.S. citizens are being laid off, followed by active company filings for foreign labor certifications. Whether this reflects isolated restructuring or a deliberate global labor strategy for Microsoft, the consequences are being felt across an entire class of highly skilled U.S. professionals.
Whose interests define U.S. workforce and immigration policy?
Microsoft once posed the question in a pro-immigration blog: “[I]sn’t it in America’s best interests to keep the world’s top talent working here in the U.S., using their skills and ideas to invent the breakthrough products of tomorrow that will drive our economy and create jobs?”
For many of the American workers recently laid off by Microsoft, that question likely strikes a deeply personal chord. After all, they are not foreign talent seeking opportunity; they are citizens of this country, whose home, families and economy they have been working to support. They’ve spent years developing the skills, earning the degrees and contributing to the innovations that built companies like Microsoft into global powerhouses.
To these workers, keeping jobs in the hands of Americans is not just in the nation’s best interest, it’s a matter of basic fairness. The decision to replace them with cheaper foreign labor may serve Microsoft’s profit margins, but most people would seriously question how it serves the American people.
Microsoft’s story is not an outlier. It is part of a broader disturbing trend among multinational tech giants: Lay off Americans, lobby for foreign labor, repeat.
For the employees who received the message, “Your journey here ends today,” the impact is immediate and personal. But the broader question now facing America is whether this ongoing cycle of quiet replacement of Americans will continue unchecked – or whether it will finally be confronted.
Follow WND for breaking exclusives, evidence-based investigations and updates on America First immigration news that the mainstream media won’t touch. You can follow us on X @Worldnetdaily/, sign up for our weekly newsletter and visit wnd.com for the latest reports, whistleblower stories and ways you can take action. Let’s keep America first – always!