Overview
- Ankit Gupta, a Y Combinator general partner, posted on X Sunday that Vice President JD Vance’s call to “hire and train Americans” was a return of “DEI” and then restricted access to his posts.
- Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, and Justice Department civil rights officials publicly criticized Gupta’s framing and urged prioritizing American workers.
- The dispute comes as the Department of Homeland Security has proposed a formal rule to impose a roughly $103,265 fee on many cap‑subject H‑1B petitions and the Labor Department has proposed changing how H‑1B wages are calculated.
- The H‑1B program lets U.S. employers hire foreign specialty workers, it is heavily used by the tech sector, and critics argue some firms use visas and staffing pipelines to lower wages and bypass American applicants.
- Y Combinator has not issued a substantive public comment beyond a brief CEO statement about supporting American hires, and the episode raises reputational and regulatory risk for startups as rulemaking and possible enforcement by DOJ, EEOC, and Labor continue.