Indians prefer to hire their own, this is very well known. And because this can’t even be discussed honestly, US corporations are powerless against this preferential treatment.
If we're giving anecdotes, I'll dish out some too. Maybe you're getting at something - communities looking out for their kind. It might be seen as good or bad depending on the situation. I've seen academic research labs that are heavy on certain ethnicities. I've seen heavy tilt of Chinese students with a Chinese PI, similarly for Iranian, Turkish. Heck, I've seen silicon valley teams that are Indian heavy, Turkish heavy, Filipino heavy.
Yes, in fact currently I am working in a team which has a disproportionate percentage of Iranians. They too like to hire Iranians. I wouldn’t have any problem with any of this if eg it was OK for Americans to prefer Americans too. If we’re going to play games, let’s at least all play by the same rules.
> Yes, in fact currently I am working in a team which has a disproportionate percentage of Iranians. They too like to hire Iranians. I wouldn’t have any problem with any of this if eg it was OK for Americans to prefer Americans too.
In the US, it is no more OK, legally, to discriminate in hiring on the basis of nationality for any nationality compared to any other.
There is an exception for work that must be done by US citizens though. No country permits foreigners to do certain security-sensitive jobs, generally.
There are places where firms are compelled by regulations to hire people who are currently US citizens, sure. That's not really employer-discretionary (and I really should have said ethnicity or national origin, and not nationality, anyway.)
But even then, it is not, as suggested upthread, more OK for Iranians to hire Iranians than for Americans to hire Americans, whether talking about nationality, national origin, or ethnicity. (Fir nationality, there are narrow cases where the latter is mandatory and the former is prohibited no matter who is hiring, sure, but that's the opposite of what was suggested.)
US citizens come from many historical nationalities.
I would wager that conditioning on US citizenship is less restrictive than conditioning on any other citizenship when seeking diverse historical nationality.
There are exceptions to everything. But only native-born US citizens are eligible for some jobs, e.g. in the military. Other countries may be even more particular and require your parents to be natives too. This is not discrimination but plain old common sense. What foreigner or foreign-adjacent person can really be trusted? If there is an exception to be made, the trust extended must be minimal.
Is it because of bias, or because there are just a lot of Indians in our industry? In my case, I have more than a few levels of managers from India, but there doesn’t seem to be any favoritism going on (I was even asked once if I was interested in people management, and said no).
I watched a company go through lawsuits because of layers of Indian middle management. Turns out, they had essentially recreated a caste system inside of a massive American corporation. At the bottom was a staggering number of female engineers from North India who got a handsome payout on the other end. This is just another anecdote. I'm not saying that's what is happening where you work. But the signs where I worked were abundantly clear for anyone who happened to look in the direction of that specific department.
I've worked at Silicon Valley startups that were that way. I remember thinking this is really odd how high the concentration was (probably about 70% Indian). Didn't really bother me because it was a great team and honestly one of the best companies I worked at.
It didn't really seem like they discriminated in hiring and I never felt discriminated against at work. It was just that coworkers referred people they already knew.
Some people will hit each other up for paid references. The guy doing the referral can get paid by the new hire and the company. Idk what threshold of acquaintance is enough for a referral, but the worst things you can imagine have been done and are even routine in some places.
I'm sure that is also true. But I know the other thing happens too. I've heard about it and read it. Some Indians even asked me for a referral, as a stranger.
Referrals are encouraged by internal recruiters in most companies...and they incentivize it with a few thousand dollars for a successful hire. Why are you making it sound so nefarious?
It's normal for companies to pay for referrals based on personal familiarity, but not for candidates to pay for fake recommendations. Outside of a fully disclosed consultancy-type arrangement, it is unacceptable for the candidate to pay anything to the referrer.
This is just a guess, but I think the problem appears more among low-level employees and managers. Maybe CEOs look the other way but I doubt they have anything real to gain by referring strangers who only look like them.
Why not treat this any differently than Whites preferring to hire their own?