Y Combinator's Ankit Gupta faces backlash over H-1B comments
americanbazaaronline.com>Gupta described it as “DEI” to “prop up” Americans as a “preferred group.”
This is easily one of the most eyebrow-raisingly dangerous things I've ever seen a leader of any kind (business or political) in the US say out loud. It summons images of the USA on fire from coast to coast in riots.
Yeah that one got my hackles up. The idea that America should not be run for the benefit of its citizens is uhhhh saying the quiet part out loud, I guess.
Always nice to know how someone really feels about a country that has made them very rich.
This happens when people are gripping their phones waiting for the next clever post to write. Anything they disagree with is an opportunity to sting someone else. You succeed 100 times, 1000 if you have FU money. Then you stop checking yourself.
We can argue whether the term DEI has been misused, but...what does it take for someone to come to the conclusion that country first is DEI?
he's not wrong though. somewhere along the lines, people started acting like it's a one-way street - america is doing immigrants a favor. it's two-ways - we've benefitted a lot from immigrants coming here, even literally the purchasing power of the US dollar, compared to other currencies. ridiculous that immigrants come here, build businesses, and then are expected to preference americans (read white men). but this country will bend over backwards to support mediocre white men when they're struggling. if it's black men, then they should fix their own problems and act like those model minority immigrants!
It was clearly a minor joke but I don’t think people realize how close to the fire the immigration debate is. There are sections of X making plans for seizing the property and belongings of deported H1B visa holders. It’s extreme but not impossible.
Most of the people talking like that are far removed from real power and influence. But I suppose extending your twitter flamewar to include the chair of the FTC is one way to change that...
Why not spin up the startups in those other countries then?
Heck, why not spin up YC Foundries elsewhere in the world?
No H1B needed.
YC has. There has been (if I remember correctly) batches entirely based on India.
No, you misunderstand, I am not saying run a batch there. I am saying that YC should startup an org there that purely contracts to their startups, no need to hire, no need for H1Bs.
Then you are competing for talent with Fortune 500 companies that pay more than startup wages.
in the US they are not competing?
Because US VCs seem to have an allergic reaction to EU regulation?
Was that a rhetorical question or do you miss the regularly scheduled front page posts complaining that the EU kills innovation?
Gotta be honest, I very strongly doubt that most H1Bs go to people out of the EU.
Ah, I see what you meant.
Congress is the problem:
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 Fox News 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."
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.
Yeah.... best of luck to him... prepare the FTC lube... :P
It legitimately cooks my brain that the son of Nimarata Randhawa is arguing with Ankit Gupta about whether prioritising hiring of American workers is DEI.
trolling very close to the sun
https://x.com/USLaborIG/status/2092719692741755140 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.
The US Constitution would be dead if the USA has 51% of people like Ankit Gupta! Money and wealth mean nothing if we do not have the country of the American people, by the American people, and for the American people. I came here as a 14-year-old kid from Vietnam. I have lived in this country for 41 years. I am still in awe thinking of the American soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who went through what they did during ww2 to provide us a stable world in the last 81 years.
I grew up immersed myself in American history. I told countless people in my life: I am grateful for America, and I came here to be American.
Ankit seems really bad for YC. Not a good dude.
How is discrimination by citizenship more acceptable than e.g. discrimination by ethnicity or race? All of these are outcomes of birth lottery.
Citizenship, while usually a circumstance of birth, comes with a a shared responsibility of the society one is a citizen of. That responsibility also goes the other way, where the society has a duty to look out for the citizen
While it sucks that people from other societies dont feel like those societies are good for them, it doesnt mean that citizens of the host society should extend that responsibility to people who do not share responsibility for that society like citizens do.
Essentially these foreign workers are mercenaries, and do not derserve the same loyalty and protections that citizens do
We are on the tail end of a 75 year old experiment in the West of divorcing where you live or were born from any sort of responsibility for anything in either direction, except for paying taxes to government and fees to your patron.
Yeah and thats going really shittily. The richest country in the world has housing crisises while the stock market reaches all time highs. Veterans are homeless. Teachers are quiting because theyre underpaid. Its clear the deal was ruined and needs to be refreshed otherwise this society will be hollowed out by the wealthy before they abscond away to somewhere better managed
Can you elaborate? I'm not quite following this.
post WW2 basically.
So citizenship is yet another contract - between an individual and a society. To eliminate the unfairness of lottery, changing citizenships should be as easy as changing jobs.
No becuase citizenship implies deep cultural and philosophical values as well. You cant switch those that quickly
Another reason is that the responsibilities between citizen and society are fulfilled on a long timescale. A society will educate you, and then you need to contribute to the economy in that society to pay it back so to speak. Technological innovation, military service, rasing future citizens. Any of these things can only happen on a long timescale so quickly switching citizenship doesnt allow that contract to be fulfilled
> No becuase citizenship implies deep cultural and philosophical values as well.
If that was the case, most existing citizens would lose their status :)
> You cant switch those that quickly
It is much faster with the globalization and youtube-ization. After all, "We all live in Amerika".
Btw, the notion of what we call today a citizenship arose just at late 18th century. So, it's not something fundamental that has always been there.
This is "gotcha" style internet trolling. It doesn't belong on HN.
To be specific, for clarity: "Most" is a dishonest word in this context, and regardless the parent did not imply a legal distinction. As for definition: First, nobody here is necessarily using the word by some specific definition invented at a particular time, but rather in the colloquial sense of being a member of a country; and second, even if they were restricting the sense of the word to the one you are referring to, recency (if that's what you're implying by "18th century"...?) does not imply some kind of triviality.
Self-assigned moderation doesn't belong to HN. Also, considering the wide cultural background of the userbase. I have no idea what's your "gotcha" style means. Neither your explanation helps.
As for the specific wording, replace "Most" with "Many", the point still stands.
Again, please refrain from moderation and silencing attempts. Thank you.
>changing citizenships should be as easy as changing jobs
Even removing legal barriers, it can't be as easy, since changing citizenships necessitates a very large geographical move, while changing jobs may a require a large move, a small move, or no move. Changing countries changes your entire life - you are leaving your home, its culture, and everybody you know there. It's cruel to imply the people who would be made miserable by such changes simply don't matter.
The point is to eliminate the birth lottery - so if you happen to be born in a bad place, moving to a better place should be just a matter of your wish.
Not taking a position on either side of the underlying debate, but obviously a government has a unique obligation to its own citizens, and ideally no unique obligation to an ethnicity or race.
A country's first responsibility should be to its citizens.
Maybe in one thousand years we will all be one joint geo-political entity, which will be great, but until then it is an unassailable fact of physical reality that nations must prioritize their own citizens. That doesn't mean ignoring everybody else - just prioritizing.
I vote to discriminate citizenship, economic or otherwise, based on the answer to this being a self evident truth
Nonsense. There is no lottery, children are born of their parents 100% of the time. Those children have a right to what their parents built, and a duty to leave it better than they found it for their children, and that includes their nations.
Because a country is not an economic unit.
What obligation does the government have to those who are not their citizens? 100% a lottery, but your logic here is willful ignorance.
The point is to have a system that does not discriminate based on lottery.
Well, an American farmer cannot sell his grain in India. That also seems to be discrimination simply because he is in the wrong place. Are you arguing that all protectionism is flawed and wrong?
Until very recently, that was a pretty common view. Countries generally want unconstrained exports, while limiting competitive imports.
That might be true in practice but also 1) completely incompatible with global notions of fairness and justice, and 2) not an especially compelling political argument for getting countries to open up their markets.
(1) Agreed.
(2) There’s very few sustainable global competitive advantages. Sometimes you might have a better natural resource by virtue of geography and getting in first to “own“ it. But for most businesses, reducing trade barriers really just introduces more competition.
That's a great ideal, but is obviously impossible to the extent that you are implying, until we can eliminate national and legal borders entirely, which is a distant-future goal. You're putting the horse lightyears before the cart.
Lol. Indians aren't hired because they're better. They're hired because they're cheaper.
And Indian bosses will bend over backward to bring the next Indians in over Americans. I have seen it at where I work.
Capitalist right-wing vs nativist right-wing
YC is openly discriminatory towards whites and men in particular. It’s honestly an open secret
too many white men are openly discriminatory to other ethnic groups and women.
This non-constructive attitude (the implication that race X is more racist than other races and therefore should be treated in a racist manner) is one of the purest forms of hypocrisy we face in Western culture. It is in my opinion, hateful.
It's demoralizing how common it is in places where more "traditionally" racist discourse is more properly shunned.
i mean it's just my experience - white men say more insensitive things at the workplace than pretty much any other group