Silicon Valley exec ignites firestorm after accusing JD Vance of bringing DEI back
A Y Combinator general partner, Ankit Gupta, has sparked a backlash after labelling Vice President JD Vance's call for American firms to "hire and train Americans" as a return of "DEI" (diversity, equity and inclusion). Several senior Trump administration officials, including FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Justice Department civil rights chief Harmeet Dhillon, publicly condemned the remark, framing it as an attack on American workers by a wealthy tech investor. The row underscores wider tensions in Silicon Valley over immigration and hiring practices as the administration pushes to overhaul the H-1B visa system.
Gupta's post, made in response to Vance, was criticised by Ferguson, Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito and Nalin Haley, son of former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, with Haley calling for the H-1B visa to be banned. Gupta's account has since been made private, and Ferguson noted he had been blocked. Dhillon separately accused some tech firms of exploiting visa schemes to secure cheaper foreign labour instead of hiring qualified Americans, saying this amounted to illegal labour practices. The dispute comes amid the administration's efforts to raise H-1B fees to over $103,000 after a $100,000 proposal was blocked by a federal judge, and a separate proposal to change how wages are calculated for the visa programme.
- Y Combinator exec called Vance's "hire Americans" push a form of "DEI"
- Trump officials, including FTC's Ferguson, publicly rebuked the comment
- Row unfolds amid administration's push to overhaul H-1B visa fees and rules
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Silicon Valley has become a flashpoint in the debate over how American tech firms hire staff, particularly around visas that let companies bring in skilled foreign workers. JD Vance, the US Vice President, has been urging companies to prioritise hiring and training American workers rather than relying on overseas talent. This has put him at odds with parts of the tech industry, which often argues it needs access to global talent to fill specialist roles.
Y Combinator is a well-known startup accelerator that has helped launch many prominent tech companies, and Ankit Gupta is one of its general partners, giving him a prominent voice within the industry. His comments touched a nerve because they invoked "DEI", a term for diversity, equity and inclusion policies that has become highly contentious in American politics, with the Trump administration having moved to roll such policies back across government and business.
The row also feeds into a bigger fight over the H-1B visa, the main route by which skilled foreign workers, many in tech, are employed in the United States. The Trump administration has been trying to raise the fees firms pay to use this visa and change how wages under it are calculated, arguing some companies use it to hire cheaper foreign staff instead of Americans, while critics of tighter rules say they could hurt firms' ability to recruit needed expertise.
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The case for
Supporters of the administration's stance argue that American companies have a basic obligation to invest in the domestic workforce before turning to cheaper overseas labour, and that decades of visa-driven recruitment have allowed some firms to sideline capable American graduates and depress wages in technical fields. They see reforms such as sharply higher H-1B fees and stricter wage calculations as correcting a system that has been exploited, not as an attack on immigration itself, and view Gupta's use of the term "DEI" as a deflection that recasts a straightforward call for fair hiring as identity politics. From this perspective, prioritising citizens for jobs and training is simply sound labour policy and a matter of basic fairness to the domestic workforce.
The case against
Those sympathetic to Gupta's underlying concern argue that Silicon Valley's success has long depended on recruiting the most talented engineers and researchers regardless of nationality, and that skills shortages in specialised fields are real, not manufactured. They worry that steep new visa fees and rigid "hire American" mandates could push innovation and investment overseas, disproportionately harming smaller startups that cannot absorb six-figure visa costs, while doing little to actually retrain the domestic workforce. On the semantic point, they contend that mandating hiring outcomes based on nationality functions like a quota system in practice, so likening it to identity-based hiring policies is a legitimate, if provocative, critique rather than bad faith.