Tech-sector titans do not have the right to replace endless American college graduates with unlimited inflows of migrants, says Harmeet Dhillon, the top-ranking civil rights official in President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice.
“This administration will not allow American employers to discriminate against American workers,” Dhillon posted Thursday night on X. “It is illegal, wrong, and bad for our economy,” she added.
The post came shortly after South African immigrant Elon Musk aligned himself with Silicon Valley investors and other employers who insist they have a right to hire foreigners they deem “most qualified,” even if they also sideline many Americans.
Graham’s “most qualified” post matters because it comes three days after his former partner and investor, Garry Tan, rebuked one of his own firm’s deputies — Ankit Gupta — for describing most of America as “flyover country.”
Graham created the Y Combinator firm in 2005. He handed management over to Tan in 2025. Tan is a legal immigrant from Canada, and describes himself as a political moderate.
Unfortunately for Tan, Gupta’s “flyover country” sneer went viral nationally and in D.C. For example, it was slammed by federal Trade Commissioner Andrew Ferguson.
In his rebuke, Tan said his investment firm “supports hiring and funding Americans,” whom he defined as “Americans born in American or naturalized.” That phrase excludes imported contract workers, such as the 2 million resident non-immigrants with H-1B, L-1, J-1, O-1, H-4EAD, TN, OPT, or CPT work permits.
A major reason why Gupta’s caught attention in D.C. was that he had earlier sneered at a viral pro-American tweet from Vice President JD Vance.
Vance’s tweet argued against the huge H-1B program that investors have used to sideline or replace millions of American graduates. The H-1B program now keeps roughly 1 million migrants and their spouses in jobs that can easily be filled by American professionals.
Gupta had slammed Vance by describing his suggested curbs on the H-1B program as “DEI” for Americans, saying “in a win for the woke left DEI is back.”
Musk’s support for easy international hiring is moderate compared to his December 2024 tweet, where he declared total support for the H-1B program:
The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.
Dhillon’s Thursday tweet puts her in Vance’s camp, against Graham and other pro-migration, “Any Willing Worker” investors on the West Coast. She posted:
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.
These are not good business practices; they are not patriotic economic practices; and they are illegal labor practices. This administration will not allow American employers to discriminate against American workers. It is illegal, wrong, and bad for our economy. I am sure my colleagues at @USEEOC and @USDOL agree. We are all on the case, and working together to level the playing field for US workers.
She later added:
This is not aimed at @ycombinator or one guy [Gupta] popping off — this problem permeates American industry & academia, and it’s a bipartisan scandal. The biggest violators are our biggest public tech companies—I know, because I worked in Silicon Valley as a tech lawyer for decades.
Breitbart News has carefully covered the H-1B program’s problems, which include kickback hiring, ethnic nepotism, credential fraud, costly featherbedding, anti-professional workplace culture, and citizen replacement. Reporters at establishment outlets, in contrast, are pressured to post misleading, whitewashed articles about the programs’ damage to college-graduate Americans.
The public’s growing recognition of the many problems is forcing a national debate amid furious opposition from business-backed lobbies. Trump’s deputies are now rolling out a cautious regulatory reform of the programs.
In her tweets, Dhillon also touted the H-1B investigations being conducted by the Department of Labor:
Tan’s firm, Y Combinator, or “YC,” was defended by some tweets:
Democrats are ignoring the visa worker debate, but are defending the use of legal and illegal migrants through the economy:
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