Y Combinator investor mocks JD Vance’s call to hire Americans first

Ankit Gupta, a general partner at the influential Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator, drew criticism from Trump administration officials after mocking Vice President JD Vance’s call to prioritize American workers over hiring cheaper foreign labor.

The controversy began after the Trump administration proposed a $103,265 fee for many new H-1B visa petitions. As it stands, the H-1B visa program allows U.S. companies to hire foreign workers for specialty occupations and is overwhelmingly used by the tech industry. However, it has long been controversial among some conservatives, who say it is abused by tech companies to bring in cheap labor to replace American workers, many of them from India.

The proposed fee would make it costlier for American tech companies to rely on such labor and could give them an incentive to hire Americans instead, something Vance has emphasized repeatedly, such as when he recently declared, “If an American corporation needs workers, it should hire and train Americans.”

Y Combinator general partner Ankit Gupta, who has since restricted his X posts from public access, mocked Vance, saying in purported screenshots, “In a win for the woke left DEI is back.”

VANCE WARNS THERE WILL BE A ‘SOCIALIST PRESIDENT IN THIS COUNTRY’ IF GOP DOESN’T FIX ECONOMY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Gupta’s comments comparing prioritizing American workers over foreign labor to DEI sparked a wave of criticism from several Trump administration officials and renewed a broader debate over H-1B visas, Silicon Valley hiring practices, and whether American workers—particularly younger and entry-level tech workers—are being disadvantaged by companies’ reliance on foreign-worker visa programs.

Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito replied, “Ankit Gupta thinks hiring Americans first—in America—is ‘DEI.’ No, Ankit. It’s called putting your own citizens first. American companies. American jobs. American workers first. If that offends you, the problem isn’t America. It’s your sense of entitlement.”

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson criticized Gupta’s rhetoric as part of a larger phenomenon of contempt for American workers.

“I’m deeply uncomfortable with wealthy investors attacking American workers like this. I’m afraid it’s increasingly obvious to many people that individuals such as this guy do not have the best interests of America and her citizens in mind,” he said. “The purpose of the American economy is to promote the general welfare of American workers, not provide jobs for the rest of the world.”

In response to Ferguson’s post, Y Combinator President and CEO Garry Tan wrote, “YC supports hiring and funding Americans.”

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon also weighed in, sharing a lengthy post criticizing what she described as abuses of the H-1B program and other foreign-worker programs.

“Our federal (and most state) employment laws mandate a level playing field for American workers vis-à-vis foreigners — yet many American tech (and other) companies prefer to hire cheaper/exploitable foreign workers to do routine jobs Americans could do, and they do this by failing to post jobs on their normal hiring channels (PERM violations), letting foreign-born hiring managers pipeline cheap foreign labor from body-shop mills over American workers (H1-B abuses), lie about their eligibility for no-cap H1-B hiring, abuse other visa categories such as J-1 visas (we see you, universities!), abuse OPT hiring to get cheap, exploitable foreign labor, and sometimes — getting super arrogant, gaslight laid-off and sidelined Americans while doing any of the above,” she wrote.

CEO UNDER FIRE FOR MASS LAYOFFS AMID FOREIGN WORKER HIRING SPREE NOW APPOINTED TO FED’S TASK FORCE ON JOBS

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon blasted policies that abuse the H-1B visa as unpatriotic. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Other commentators, ranging from policy think tanks to former Trump officials, spoke to Digital about the controversy.

John Miano, an attorney with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), said the debate speaks to fundamental questions about the role of the United States and its immigration system.

“The center of this dispute is over what America is. I, and I think most Americans, believe America as a nation state; a commonwealth for the improvement of its citizens. Mr. Gupta clearly views America as an [economic] zone. The graves at Arlington and cemeteries around the world are not the product of Americans fighting and dying to save an economic zone. I would not want to share a foxhole with Mr. Gupta,” he told Digital. 

He added, “There is no such thing as the [Libertarian] ideal of economics without borders. I would wager that Mr. Gupta opposes open borders regarding intellectual property. The H-1B program is designed to replace Americans with cheap foreign workers. The U.S. Congress is apparently the only national legislature that has voted to make it explicitly legal to replace citizens with foreign workers, as it has done with H-1B. The H-1B wage system is designed to allow employers to pay H-1B nonimmigrants extremely low wages. The biggest problem with H-1B is that it works exactly as Congress designed it to work.”

CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF MEDIA AND CULTURE

Vice President JD Vance represents something of a shift within the Republican Party from their economic posture in recent decades, calling on them to prioritize American-born workers. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE APP

Former Trump Appointee and Senior Advisor to the U.S. Senate, Mary Marslender, now a Republican consultant, explained how tech companies specifically find loopholes in the rules to avoid hiring Americans, particularly those trying to enter the job market.

“The uncomfortable reality is that many large American corporations prefer cheaper foreign labor because it gives them greater control over mid- to entry-level positions, all while telling Washington that qualified American workers can’t be found. Immigration lawyers have been caught on video admitting their goal is to avoid hiring qualified Americans,” she said. “Some have even confessed to placing job ads in obscure newspapers where Americans are unlikely to look, and then, if a qualified American applies, interviewing them specifically to find a legal basis to disqualify them. Prioritizing cheap foreign labor over American workers denies Americans jobs, particularly young people who need the firsthand job experience to launch their careers. American jobs should go to Americans first.”

Theo Wold, a former acting assistant attorney general and former White House deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy under Trump, argued that part of what makes America great historically is its amazing pool of native talent.

“Jack St. Clair Kilby and Robert Noyce invented the microchip. They also both grew up in America’s heartland. From airplanes and the television to nuclear submarines and the internet, American genius invented the modern world. But today’s Silicon Valley elites would rather replace the next Robert Noyce with a foreign national on an H-1B visa than invest in American talent. America has a unique convergence of brainpower and risk tolerance. And our young people took the challenge and are excelling in STEM,” he said. “America now graduates enough American STEM students to fill every opening in America’s tech and tech-related industries. We should be encouraging our young talent to build anew, rather than replace them with cheap labor widgets from Guangdong and Andhra Pradesh.”

Digital reached out to Y Combinator for comment but did not immediately receive a response.