Ankit Gupta’s comments on hiring Americans have turned into a much bigger fight than a social media spat. The Y Combinator general partner is now facing scrutiny from Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, who has accused American companies of using H-1B and other visa programs to access cheaper foreign labor while sidelining U.S. workers.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon weighed in after Gupta’s earlier comments describing it as “DEI” to “prop up” Americans as a preferred group. Dhillon shared a screenshot of Gupta’s post on X and said federal and most state employment laws require employers to maintain a level playing field between American workers and foreign workers.
She accused some companies of using visa programs and hiring practices to access cheaper foreign labor, pointing to alleged abuses involving PERM recruitment, H-1B visas, J-1 visas and the Optional Practical Training program.
“Our federal (and most state) employment laws mandate a level playing field for American workers vis-à-vis foreigners,” Dhillon wrote.
She alleged that some employers avoid posting jobs through regular hiring channels, rely on foreign-born hiring managers to recruit workers through staffing firms and misuse different visa categories to hire what she described as “cheap, exploitable foreign labor.”
READ: Y Combinator’s Ankit Gupta faces backlash over H-1B comments; Nalin Haley reacts (August 27, 2026)
Dhillon also accused some companies of mistreating American workers who have been laid off or sidelined while relying on foreign labor.
“These are not good business practices; they are not patriotic economic practices; and they are illegal labor practices,” she wrote.
Dhillon said the Trump administration would not allow American employers to discriminate against U.S. workers and added that the Department of Justice is working with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Labor on the issue.
However, Dhillon later also clarified that her comments were not just specifically directed at Y Combinator or Gupta.
“This is not aimed at @ycombinator or one guy popping off,” she wrote. “This problem permeates American industry & academia, and it’s a bipartisan scandal.”
She added that some of the biggest violations occur at major public technology companies, citing her decades of experience as a technology lawyer in Silicon Valley.
The comments have nevertheless intensified scrutiny of Gupta and Y Combinator, with social media users continuing to criticize the accelerator over Gupta’s position on hiring American workers.
Anthony D’Esposito, the Justice Department’s Inspector General, also joined the discussion, directly criticizing Gupta’s comments.
“Ankit Gupta thinks hiring Americans first—in America—is ‘DEI,’” D’Esposito wrote on X. “No, Ankit. It’s called putting your own citizens first.”
He argued that American companies should prioritize American jobs and workers, adding, “If that offends you, the problem isn’t America. It’s your sense of entitlement.”
Conservative commentator Jenn Pellegrino also criticized Gupta, arguing that the U.S. economy should primarily serve Americans living in the country.
“Y Combinator General Partner Ankit Gupta says it’s DEI for American companies to prioritize hiring Americans,” she wrote. “You have it backwards, Mr. Gupta. We are NOT an economic zone. America is our home, and our economy exists to serve the people who live in it, not the rest of the world.”
The controversy has also spilled over into questions about Y Combinator’s portfolio.
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One X user claimed Gupta’s comments had caused “incalculable damage” to the accelerator and pointed to Gale, a recent Y Combinator-backed company that describes itself as an immigration platform. The post highlighted the backgrounds of Gale’s senior founders and questioned whether YC is supporting companies that benefit from the immigration ecosystem.
Other users have gone further, accusing Y Combinator of funding and expanding what they described as “visa factories.” Those claims remain social media speculation and have not been established as evidence of wrongdoing by Y Combinator or its portfolio companies.
The controversy has also prompted calls from some Republican influencers for FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson to investigate Y Combinator.
So far, the online criticism has centered largely on Gupta’s comments and broader concerns about H-1B hiring rather than any announced federal investigation into Y Combinator. There has been no official statement that the FTC has opened such an investigation.
For Gupta, what began as a response to the debate over “America First” hiring has now attracted attention from senior federal officials and prominent conservative voices. The question is no longer limited to whether prioritizing American workers should be described as DEI. It has expanded into a much larger fight over H-1B hiring, employer practices and whether U.S. companies are giving American workers a fair shot.
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Gupta has put his finger on one part of the story, though only one. Executives, under pressure to fill seats quickly, have largely given up the older habit of coordinating their hiring needs with schools and universities; the pipeline that once ran from classroom to office has been left to look after itself, and it shows.
But there is a second story here, and it is being told quietly, mostly in Delhi rather than Washington. Most H-1B candidates come from India, and India has been watching the mood in the West sour on mass immigration for some time now. The result is a certain domestic pressure — not yet loud, but unmistakable — to reduce what one might call the push factors: the accumulated reasons an ambitious young Indian has historically found it easier to build a career abroad than at home.
The previous government, which leaned left, did expand energy and transport infrastructure, if only at a deliberate pace. The present one, leaning right, has picked up the tempo considerably.
There is, underneath this, a change of mind about what a developing country ought to aim for. The old assumption was modest: aspire to where America stood thirty years ago, and be grateful for the privilege. The newer view is less patient. A country cannot create enough employment by recycling sectors that are already saturated; it must create new ones, and new sectors do not arise from research that is content to be thirty years behind. The research has to be at the frontier, or there is no new sector to create.
America’s anxiety is that its own workers are being passed over. India’s anxiety is that its young find no jobs at home. The tidy thing about this moment is that both anxieties might be relieved by the same medicine: if India grows fast enough, and builds enough at home worth staying for, the pressure on the H-1B route eases from the supply side, quite without anyone in Washington having to legislate it away. It is not a certainty. But it is, for once, a race in which both parties stand to gain from the same runner winning.