Vice President JD Vance defended the Trump administration’s immigration policies in a speech Wednesday, predicting that the United States was on the cusp of “net negative immigration.”
Speaking at an artificial intelligence summit hosted by the All In Podcast and the Hill and Valley Forum in Washington, the vice president addressed conservative critics who claim the White House is not doing enough to fight illegal immigration.
Noting that the Trump administration has faced legal and practical struggles while pursuing its goal of 1 million deportations this year, Vance nevertheless said that if you consider the “net number” of deportations, the Trump administration has been “wildly successful.”
“In 2025 we will have the first net negative immigration number in about 50 or 60 years in the United States,” Vance said.
He also responded to the argument that more deportations occurred under Biden.
“That’s actually a completely fake statistic. It’s based on the fact that if you come into the country illegally, and then the Biden administration processes you and sends you out, that counts as a deportation.”
Border Patrol didn’t release a single illegal into the United States in May, the New York Post reported. By contrast, 62,000 illegal migrants crossed the border in the same month last year.
During his address Vance also criticized companies — calling out Microsoft specifically — for performing mass layoffs while actively applying for H1-B visas.
H1-B visas are temporary work permits that allow American companies to employ foreign nonimmigrant skilled workers in “specialty occupations.” There is a cap on how many H1-B visas can be issued per year, currently set at 65,000.
“You see some big tech companies where they’ll lay off 9,000 workers, and then they’ll apply for a bunch of overseas visas. And I sort of wonder; that doesn’t totally make sense to me,” Vance said, seemingly referencing Microsoft, who announced their latest round of layoffs earlier this month which would affect 9,000 employees, or 4% of their workforce.
“That displacement and that math worries me a bit. And what the president has said, he said very clearly: we want the very best and the brightest to make America their home. We want them to build great companies and so forth.”
“But I don’t want companies to fire 9,000 American workers and then to go and say, ‘We can’t find workers here in America,’” Vance added. “That’s a bulls*** story.”
Rumours were circulating on X after Microsoft announced its layoffs that it has applied for over 6,000 H1-B visas since the start of the fiscal year in October. Though the rumours are currently unsubstantiated, last year Microsoft applied for and received 9,491 H1-B visas.
This comes as multiple big tech companies collectively committed to investing $90 billion into developing AI infrastructure in Pennsylvania at a summit that Trump attended last week. Trump also signed three executive orders on Wednesday that will deregulate and encourage investment in the AI industry.
“We created the digital age, and now we are leading the world into the golden age,” Trump said at the signing. “With your help, that golden age will be built by American workers. It will be powered by American energy. It will be run on American technology, improved by American artificial intelligence,” he told tech companies.