NewsLab
Aug 28 15:48 UTC

Y Combinator's Ankit Gupta faces backlash over H-1B comments (americanbazaaronline.com)

53 points|by Tabular-Iceberg||39 comments|Read full story on americanbazaaronline.com

Comments (39)

39 shown
  1. 1. samrus||context
    trolling very close to the sun
  2. 2. zerr||context
    How is discrimination by citizenship more acceptable than e.g. discrimination by ethnicity or race? All of these are outcomes of birth lottery.
  3. 3. ckrapu||context
    A country's first responsibility should be to its citizens.
  4. 4. estearum||context
    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.
  5. 5. ActionHank||context
    What obligation does the government have to those who are not their citizens? 100% a lottery, but your logic here is willful ignorance.
  6. 6. zerr||context
    The point is to have a system that does not discriminate based on lottery.
  7. 7. ckrapu||context
    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?
  8. 8. __d||context
    Until very recently, that was a pretty common view. Countries generally want unconstrained exports, while limiting competitive imports.
  9. 9. ckrapu||context
    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.
  10. 10. happytoexplain||context
    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.
  11. 11. happytoexplain||context
    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.
  12. 12. samrus||context
    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

  13. 13. paleotrope||context
    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.
  14. 14. happytoexplain||context
    Can you elaborate? I'm not quite following this.
  15. 15. unified101||context
    post WW2 basically.
  16. 16. zerr||context
    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.
  17. 17. happytoexplain||context
    >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.

  18. 18. gos9||context
    I vote to discriminate citizenship, economic or otherwise, based on the answer to this being a self evident truth
  19. 19. Tabular-Iceberg||context
    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.
  20. 20. ActionHank||context
    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.

  21. 21. phoronixrly||context
    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?

  22. 22. ActionHank||context
    Gotta be honest, I very strongly doubt that most H1Bs go to people out of the EU.
  23. 23. phoronixrly||context
    Ah, I see what you meant.
  24. 24. blhack||context
    YC has. There has been (if I remember correctly) batches entirely based on India.
  25. 25. ActionHank||context
    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.
  26. 26. downrightmike||context
    Then you are competing for talent with Fortune 500 companies that pay more than startup wages.
  27. 27. em-bee||context
    in the US they are not competing?
  28. 28. tkel||context
    Capitalist right-wing vs nativist right-wing
  29. 29. xvxvx||context
    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.
  30. 30. _--__--__||context
    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...
  31. 31. happytoexplain||context
    >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.

  32. 32. rpmisms||context
    Always nice to know how someone really feels about a country that has made them very rich.
  33. 33. exolymph||context
    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.
  34. 34. figassis||context
    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?

  35. 35. geegee3||context
    Ankit seems really bad for YC. Not a good dude.
  36. 36. cinquemb||context
    Yeah.... best of luck to him... prepare the FTC lube... :P
  37. 37. BigTit||context
    YC is openly discriminatory towards whites and men in particular. It’s honestly an open secret
  38. 38. plugger||context
    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.
  39. 39. kappi||context
    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.