Microsoft and Adobe got caught chasing cheap labor. Good.

On Thursday the Trump administration did something I have wanted to see for a long time. It told some of the biggest names in technology that they can no longer use the green-card labor certification program to bring in foreign workers.

Effective immediately, the Department of Labor will not accept new or pending permanent labor certification applications from Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Tata, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. Without that certification, a company can't sponsor a foreign worker for a green card. The door to keeping those workers here permanently is shut, at least for now.

The numbers explain why. "Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers," Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said. "They've received over 230,000 H-1B visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications."

Vice President JD Vance singled out Microsoft, saying the company laid off about 6,000 American workers in the past year while benefiting from about 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. "There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused the system more than Microsoft," he said. Microsoft and Adobe did not immediately respond to reporters' requests for comment.

What these visas were supposed to do

I spent years working in technology. I worked alongside a lot of bright, talented people from India and from all over the world, and many of them became friends. This isn't about them.

The H-1B program and the labor certification behind green cards were sold to Americans with a simple promise: when a company truly cannot find a qualified American for a job, it can bring in someone from abroad. That is a reasonable deal. If a company needs a rare specialist, it should be able to hire one.

But that is not how the system has been used. Many of the engineers brought in under these programs were not rare specialists. In my experience, plenty of them were entry level: beginners, still learning the job. Those are positions that could have been filled by Americans, including the young graduates coming out of San Diego State, UC San Diego and colleges across this country every spring.

Why companies did it

The reason isn't complicated. Companies were chasing savings for their shareholders.

I'm a capitalist, and I won't apologize for it. A company's job is to make as much money as it can for the people who own it. That is how our economy grows.

But a company also does business in a country, and that country has citizens. When a corporation uses a visa program meant for genuine shortages to replace qualified Americans with cheaper labor, it isn't just cutting costs. It is breaking the bargain that let it use the program in the first place. Well-paying jobs in this country should go first to the people who already live here and are ready to do them.

We can't take everyone

America is still the shining city on a hill. Hundreds of millions of people around the world would come here to live and work if they could. That says something wonderful about this country.

It also means we can't take them all, and we shouldn't pretend we can. Opening the doors wider every time a corporation wants to lower its payroll is not compassion. It's a subsidy for the bottom line, paid for by American workers.

The long-term answer for the rest of the world is not to move here. It is for people to demand better from their own governments: governments that are socialist, corrupt, or so overregulated that talented people can't build a future at home. America became a beacon because Americans built something worth wanting. Others can do the same.

Hire American

Thursday's suspensions are not the end of the story. Federal investigators say they have more cases underway, and companies that clean up their hiring may eventually win back access. That is how it should work.

The message to corporate America is simple: if you want to do business in the United States, hire Americans first. If you truly can't find one, the program is there for you. If you can, you have no business using it.

Christopher South is the publisher of San Diego Newsline and has worked in the technology industry.