Executive Summary

Internationally, Indians have demonstrated a pattern of discriminating against non-Indian workers.

With the growing concentration of Indians in IT, this is a problem for domestic workers worldwide.

The more Indians get to know what a domestic IT worker does, the more they can determine if there is someone they know who can replace that domestic worker with an Indian friend or acquaintance.

Introduction

Indian discrimination against non-Indians and other out-group Indians is pervasive in the IT sector in locations where Indians have emigrated. This discrimination is invisible and uncovered by the major IT media entities. For this reason, this article you are about to read will seems dramatically different than any article published by any significant IT media entity. We cover why this issue is blacked out in IT media in the article Why IT Media Turns a Blind Eye to Indian IT.

The Convergence of Reports from All Directions

The first items we wanted to present are quotations from Quora. This is so that before we get into our analysis, we wanted to provide quotations on the topic that we had nothing to do with creating. Indians that push back on this story generally like to propose that the entire situation is made up and that Indians do not demonstrate the pattern described in this article. However, comments, both public and privately shared, paint the same picture. These quotations illustrate a convergence of observation on the topic of Indian discrimination against non-Indians. It will be shown that explained discrimination is more narrow than this, with the discrimination being for a particular subset of Indians versus both non-Indians and other Indians.

Indians as Discriminating Against Other Indians

The following is a description of how they usually see the discrimination begin. An Indian wrote this observation.

“Many Indians in IT firms don’t just discriminate at the national level, many of them discriminate on a religion, race or caste-level. It usually starts like this. They first look at your name in the resume. Is it a “cool” sounding Brahmin name? (like Anand Gopalakrishnan). Or is it a Punjabi name? (Parminder Singh). Or perhaps, it’s a Telugu name (Sudheer Reddy). Or does your name sound totally unheard of, hard to pronounce and possibly from a lower caste? (Pazhanimuththu Kanakadas). Godforbid, hopefully it isn’t a Muslim name (Imtiaz Khan), an Indian Christian name (David Kamaraj) or a Chinese name (Pang Pang).”

This illustrates that even Indians that are not in the right caste or have the right religion from the dominant group receive discrimination. The employment in the US, for instance, of Indians is not from all parts of India. It is very concentrated in specific areas of India and from distinct castes, with Bhraman being the dominant caste. Typically the US anti-discrimination laws are centered on race. First, they are only usually enforced for minority groups against whites. There is virtually no concern for discrimination by minorities against whites or other minorities. Second, Indian discrimination is more complicated than racial discrimination. Indians have a complicated discrimination modality that is sub-race and is a combination of Indians from specific areas and beyond that caste. Indians prefer a type of scenario which they had back in India. So the preference is from Brahmans to be at the top of the organizations. For most outsiders, their divisions are invisible. Each of the groups is seen as “Indian” by Western eyes (or at least all by the most trained). But for Indians, these divisions are highly relevant. They determine who can be hired into what role, how they relate to others, who have status over others, and so on.

Domestic workers who get Indian bosses usually don’t enjoy the experience. Indian standards for labor are terrible in India, and abuse is common.

Dealing with Abusive Indian Management Approaches

“If you are Black, Asian or from the middle-east, the answer is obvious. Racism. If you are white, it’s not so much the case that hiring you is expensive, as it is that you are a flight risk. American locals wouldn’t take kindly to the authoritarian and abusive management style of Indian managers and Indian managers are aware of it.”

Indians do not create environments that non-Indians want to work. They are hostile environments. The major Indian consulting companies, for instance, Infosys, WiPro, HCL, Cognizant, and TATA or TCS, employ mostly Indians in the US but are only occasionally subject to well-known discrimination lawsuits. Various Indian firms play settlements to the US Department of Justice, as covered in the following quotation.

“The settlement, which the U.S. Justice Department said was the largest in a case of alleged civil fraud over visas, was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Infosys, India’s second-largest IT services exporter, agreed in the settlement that it committed civil violations of U.S. employment law, but it was not required to admit and did not admit widespread further wrongdoing.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T85g2lRjA1w India has never developed a system of regulations that protect employees. Bonded labor is considered normal and acceptable in India. India does not have what those in the developed world would find a functioning government. The Indian government is so corrupt it has made no progress on a host of quality of life issues since the British left India over 73 years ago. India’s population continues to grow, but things are getting worse, not better. Indian income inequality has increased over the past several decades. Even issues like water management are a massive problem.

More than 600 million Indians face “acute water shortages,” according to a report last summer by NITI Aayog, a prominent government think tank. Seventy percent of the nation’s water supply is contaminated, causing an estimated 200,000 deaths a year. Some 21 cities could run out of groundwater as early as next year, including Bangalore and New Delhi, the report found. Forty percent of the population, or more than 500 million people, will have “no access to drinking water” by 2030. – Technology Review

India cannot manage water because India is not a national government in the sense the US, New Zealand, or Germany have national governments. This gets to the dysfunctional nature of India’s government, which places it as in danger of being merely a failed state.

This is the Failed State Index. Let us review the definition of a failed state.

A failed state is a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly. – Wikipedia

Something that few people in the US know is that India is very close to being a failed state. Its next-door neighbor, Pakistan, is a failed state. When Indians immigrate to European based countries, they are receiving a massive upgrade. Those people that get out of India have an endless series of requests from family members and members of a similar tribe to get them jobs in the US. This is why Indians target US workers.

Indians see it as their duty to get jobs for family and tribe members in the US to get them out of India. Imagine being pressured by family members and by friends to get them to the US. The social pressure in Indian society is intense. Indians need to solidify their position in the US, to reduce job threats, they feel more comfortable and protected if surrounded by other Indians.

The Indian Rights Over Non-India Derived Countries

Indians who emigrated to European based countries think they are obtaining rights because they are so amazing, but what they do not realize is that they are leveraging systems of regulations and laws that they had nothing to do with building. All they did was jump on an airplane, and this allowed them to benefit from hundreds of years of European based progress. However, Indians don’t see it this way. To their mind, they earned all of the benefits that were created by entirely different cultures.

Furthermore, they seem to believe that more Indians also deserve this. As for improving conditions in India, this is well known not to be possible. As for fighting for union rights in India, this will also never happen. But Indians will migrate to European based systems, and both benefit from and at the same time degrade the labor rights within those countries. They have done this by both bringing discrimination into the labor markets where they have migrated and by acting as recruiters and creating contractual documents that are inconsistent with the labor standards in these countries.

Evidence for this degradation of labor standards is found in how Indian recruiting companies offer contracts to domestic employees that are entirely contrary to US employment norms, as we covered in the article Contract Clauses to Watch Out for In Indian Professional Service Agreements. This recruiting company that was profiled in this case study not only offered this contract but then lied about the clauses within the contract.

When Indian firms are caught violating US employment law, they pay out fines. When the US Government receives these funds, they do nothing for US domestic workers; they consume the funds. However, the damaged parties are the domestic worker, not the US Government. The fines are never enough to alter behavior.

Breaking the H1-B Laws and Easily Paying out the Fines

However, at the fines imposed of 1 million dollars or 34 million dollars paid out occasionally, Indian firms can afford to pay out fines indefinitely. That is, they can see it as a cost of doing business. None of the Indian firms in IT have employee compositions that look anything like the typical demographics in the countries they operate outside of India. However, each of these firms could argue that because they are terrible companies to work for that only nearly no Americans would want to work there. However, even though they freely discriminate, the US does not bring actions against them. This allows the Indian firms to continue acting as they always do.

How The Major Indian Consulting Firms Displace Domestic Workers from Jobs

When Infosys, WiPro, or TATA sell a project in the US or Europe, it means that the team will be primarily Indian. Domestic workers lose jobs when this happens. There are many companies like Cisco, IBM, Oracle, and HPE that are founded in the US and their heritage and their perception but are highly Indian. And domestic firms that become Indian seem to go in one direction. That is, they become progressively more Indian. IBM stopped reporting employment by country because IBM has been laying off domestic workers in primary markets for IT services (US, Europe, Australia, Canada) and replacing them with Indian workers. Intel has been classifying Indian workers as domestic also to hide the fact that Intel is becoming increasingly Indian.

The Importance of Hiding the Speed of the Transformation

Companies that become strongly Indian hide that fact from both customers and the general public, and this leads to a considerable underestimation of the degree to which domestic companies are becoming strongly Indian. IT media seems to think this issue is not worth covering, and they represent the interests of the employing companies over the workers. Indians see this massive takeover of the US and Europe IT as a very positive development and as a success. However, every job consumed by an Indian worker is taken from a domestic worker. The reason being that India primarily offers workers. There is close to zero demand generated from India in IT.

Companies like Accenture or Deloitte do not sell consulting projects in India; they use Indian workers to displace domestic workers in the primary IT markets. This is the same modality of commerce, as is found in the Middle East in construction projects. Indian (and Pakistan) construction workers come over to various Middle East countries and displace workers in those countries. However, in those cases, the workers do not become Saudi or Dubai citizens. They eventually go back to India.

There is little “trade” between the primary IT markets; the primary IT markets are either importing Indian workers, who eventually become citizens or outsourcing work to Indian firms in India. There is no getting around. These are jobs that would ordinarily be performed by domestic workers. Indian workers in the primary IT markets do not “make the pie bigger” for non-Indian workers. They take a slice out of the pie, and an increasingly large slice. And once that slice is received, it grows to a larger and large slice.

Indian Workers and Income Inequality

Furthermore, the jobs taken from the domestic worker not only transfer wealth from the domestic worker to the Indian worker, and make the work environment hostile for the other domestic workers, they also increase income inequality in the domestic location. Through the H1-B program, US companies have booked far more profits than they would have if they had not had the H1-B program, and that is what is undiscussed in the Indian media that this leads to higher income inequality in the US and the other primary IT markets.

How The Indian Bias Against Non-Indians Extends to Indians in a Tribal Manner

“So is there a bias towards Indians while hiring for IT positions in Indian-run companies? Definitely. And that too, it’s a bias only towards a small sub-section of Indians.”

For the domestic workers, it is not particularly material if Indians discriminate against Indians that are not part of whatever the in-group appears to be. This is because the majority of Indians that immigrate to developed countries discriminate against the domestic population within that country. It cannot be said that because Indians discriminate against other Indians as well, that discrimination is not an issue. When Indians discriminate against the domestic population, they violate US anti-discrimination laws. The problem is one of perception and unequal treatment of who can claim discrimination. That discrimination is only discrimination if some groups undertake discrimination. Other groups demonstrate high levels of discrimination can’t be charged with doing so. At least that appears to be the logic.

Many of the Indians in the US are actually from a relatively part of India, and the Indians from this region treat the H1-B program as their property. This region not only claims the vast majority of H1-B visas versus the rest of India but the vast majority of H1-B visas versus the rest of the world. If this region has not rigged the H1-B system, one has to ask why this pattern exists.

Where Are Indians in the US Primarily From in India?

Most Americans have no idea where different Indians are from, are unaware of the regional or other differences in India. To most Americans, any Indian is “from India,” and that is the end of it. However, the Indians that come to the US for IT work are from one specific area according to not only this commenter but others we have interviewed.

“If you take a count of the total people hired in US in IT, you will find that 90 to 95% of them are from Andhra Pradesh in India. I have worked for several companies in the bay area and other states and in spite of my experience and skills was always threatened by an incapable Telugu manager, Lead or candidate who only wanted to hire people of his caste. As if this was not enough, most of the Indian recruiting companies in the Bay Area are run by Telugu people who prefer to hire people from their region/caste and also work hand in hand with hiring managers to give a commission off the rates they make. This is very well known and widely practiced in companies such as CISCO and many others in the bay area. There are instances when my recruiting company told me that my resume didn’t stand a chance because the other recruiting company that was working with this client was bribing managers to get their folks in. The result you see is incompetent inexperienced people who get hired for low rates, the cuts off salary goes to the recruiting company and hiring manager. No guessing how this has affected the IT job market. Really surprised this crap has been going on for the last 10 years or so and nothing has been done about it.”

No doubt this article will be unpopular, but this is particular information. What is the motivation to make this type of information up? It seems there is a minimal incentive. It is unheard of for people to bribe people to get people into a company, but the topic of bribery repeatedly comes up when describing Indian hiring. And this is a point of contention for other Indians.

“Absolutely, sometimes you can even find Indians who got frustrated by this because they are born in the wrong part of India.”

And this gets to not only the discrimination against Indians but the fact that there are enormous numbers of Indians who want to come to the US (or Europe, or Australia), but can’t because they are not in the right group.

There are roughly 146 million jobs in the US, and if Indians could have their preference, all of those jobs would be filled by Indians. Given the situation in India, the only limitation is the inability of Indians to take those jobs.

The number of US jobs (or Europe or Australia, etc..) that are made available to Indians is the number that will be taken.

No matter how many jobs are consumed by Indians, even if all of the employees in all of the developed countries were consumed, it would still not satisfy the demand for jobs in India. India has a larger population than the US, Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand combined. That is all the places that Indians would like to work, by a considerable margin.

The speed of transformation of IT in the US to highly and, in some cases, predominantly Indian, is breathtaking. IT departments now bear no relationship to the racial composition of the rest of the companies where the IT departments are housed.

How to Domestic Firms With Previously Domestic Labor Become Indian so Quickly?

Indians like to propose that they are so skilled that companies become Indian after the first small number of Indians are hired because of the demand for skills. This is a rather unique position that Indians are not only more skilled than any one group but than all other groups. And that further Indians from one part of India are also more competent than all of the other Indians from other parts of India. However, this following quotation brings up a different reason.

“I have worked in Silicon Valley in both startups and big companies and my experience is the same as what the question says: Indians will ONLY hire other Indians and, like other people mentioned, they will only hire Indians like them. This is true most of the time with Indians who arrived in Silicon Valley to work or to go to University to study. The next generation, the Indians who were born here, is more Americanized and therefore more attuned to the principles of fairness and judging somebody on their merits, not on who they are related to or who are their friends with.”

How Indians Proliferate More Indians

This is an entirely different commenter than the commenter from the previous quotations. This commenter goes on to describe a pattern of infiltration that occurs after the first Indians begin to work at a firm.

“I can tell you it is something that is recognized and spoken by everyone here. I have friends from all ethnic groups (Latino, Chinese, Japanese, White) and they all say the same thing: once an Indian is hired in a position of relative power (say middle management) a constant stream of resumes from his family or friends will come and, after that, most of the group will be Indian. I, like other people who answered, also have very good Indian friends and they themselves say the same thing: Indians have a long-running tradition of nepotism and cronyism and they do the same here in Silicon Valley. It is not uncommon to go to a startup run by Indian management or a big company with Indian managers and see their relatives working there (the second cousin, the brother-in-law, the wife, the son and so on). This, of course, is not a problem, if people were qualified for the job they do. Sadly, in a lot of cases that is not the case, they get the job because a relative got it for them.”

Why would nepotism and cronyism be so consistently attributed to Indians who immigrate to other countries? This further brings up the question of what happens when Indians are hired? Does the hiring of a few Indians necessarily mean that many more Indians will soon be working at that company?

Indians are renowned for falsifying their resumes. The Indian term for this is “spicing” the resume. Indian firms such as Infosys, Wipro, and TATA are famous for doing this. There are also many cases where one Indian will take an interview, but then another will show up for the job. It takes a while to figure out that the person that is showing up to work is not the person interviewing.

How Highly Skilled Again?

In the Indian media, they routinely use the term “highly skilled.” However, while that is the description of an H1-B Visa, and the first logic of the program, only a small fraction of the H1-B Visa holders fall into this category.

At Brightwork, we have received repeated requests from people in India who are recent college graduates with no special skills to sponsor them for an H1-B Visa. The concept among Indians is the H1-B program is a system to be scammed.

At several SAP consulting companies, we found large scale resume falsification on the part of H1-B Visa holders.

At one consulting firm, the H1-B Visa holders have a particular incentive to falsify their resume as if they did not get staffed. They would have a high likelihood of being let go, which could very likely mean having to move back to India.

However, the H1-B program was never passed into law under the concept that just about any Indian who has an education would be able to qualify for one. The H1-B Visa is viewed in India as the best opportunity to improve one’s condition in life. Therefore, the incentives to do what is necessary to stay are incredibly high. This is not to say that domestic resources do not also have an incentive to be successful. However, with a domestic resource, their jobs are not tied to their citizenship or their rights to stay in the country. To a worker from Denmark or Italy, it does not improve their condition all that much if they remain in the US or go back home. But to Indians, it is a significant upgrade in their lives and the lives of their families. Nearly every H1-B Visa holder’s goal is to move to become a citizen. As one moves through the various stages of citizenship, the ability of the employer to control them decreases. And their pay and other freedom increase.

Experiences from Singapore With Those Discriminated Against by Indians

Indian behavior of immigrants is similar to the world over. This following quotation is from a commenter from Singapore.

“They created a lot of new manager roles so that they can send their friends in. 5 years ago, we had 1 manager and 15 guys. Now, 7 guys with 3 managers! (The rest left of moved). They force people out by abusing their power. Every year, they have to publish a organization chart. When they realized that all the managers are Indians,(In Singapore, they are not the absolute minority, but definitely low in numbers.) they gave an organization chart without picture! No one will notice that right? Except we are the only region in the world that does not have a picture on the organization chart! So in the end, Indian managers are definitely having some big problems. But due to the political correctly, they can do it. But we can’t point it out. “Racialism “ I guess.”

It is not possible to know the race of this commenter, but most of Singapore’s population is ethnic Chinese. Therefore, it is curious that it may also not be possible for an ethnic Chinese Singaporean to call out this behavior for fear of being called racist.

India is a strongly hierarchical society that allows for minimal questioning. Europe based countries would need to have their clocks turn back hundreds of years to approximate the lack of participation from the lower levels that are allowed in India.

Reinstituting an Indian Caste System Within Non-Indian Companies

India has a very rigid caste system that is based initially upon Hinduism, where each group comes from a different part of the body, as explained in the video above. Nearly all of the Indians in the US come from the higher castes and therefore are very accustomed to a rigid social hierarchy. And with intense indifference to those lower on the social hierarchy, and to be at the top of the social hierarchy. The comfort level of Indians with a caste system is found in how Indians attempt to recreate the caste system in their workplaces in the countries to which they migrate. This is only made evident in the later stages of their control over an organization, as the following quotation explains.

“Once Indians have taken over an organization, they would establish a caste system of Brahmin priest caste as senior managers. The Brahmin would act all civilize as vegetarians non-meat eaters while appointing lower caste Indians as middle management along with the Sikhs. The middle management Indians would be the ones who brutalize workers and do the bullying while the Brahmins just smiles and silently approve their discriminatory behavior. The organisation will turn into a caste system as follows: Brahmin Indians Middle caste Indians + Sikh Indians Older whites Young whites Non-Indian minorities. Harassment of non-Indians staff, in particular, sexual harassment, is not uncommon. Non Indians are deprived of career opportunities while bully to quit just so the Indians can import more Indians into the workplace using immigration loophole.”

The description above sounds horrible. It is the exact opposite of meritocracy and is mostly reinforced through Indians stacking the deck with as many possible Indians as possible. This enhances a strategy used by Indians where they use their numbers to act as a “block.” In the US, the domestic population tends to act as individuals. Indeed, there are various cliques and “networks.” For example, it is well known that when executives from Oracle begin working at a software vendor, that company can have several Oracle resources come over that form an Oracle clique at the new vendor. Oracle employees are so known for this, and thus known for worsening the condition of companies that they migrate to, ex-Oracle employees are a considerable liability. However, the descriptions of Indian behavior in their newly adopted homes indicate that they form a semi-cohesive unit that discriminates in favor of more Indians at the expense of the domestic population. This is without considering how Indians generally make the companies they work for hostile to non-Indian workers in more subtle ways. This commenter brings up this point.

“In the end they aim to take over our IT industry and replace all workers with Indians.”

Yes, and what is stopping this?

Indians Acting as a Block Against Domestic Workers

If Indians act as a block and there are what amounts to an unlimited number of Indians who seek to leave India as they cannot make a comparable living in India, when does this stop? The answer is it never does, not until domestic workers stand up and put a stop to it. Currently, Indian companies like Wipro and TATA are known to be hostile to non-Indian workers. Still, companies like IBM and Oracle are so high in Indian concentration that they are considered less appealing to domestic workers. There is not a single domestic US company that increases its percentage of Indian workers in a significant way, that stays equally appealing as a work environment for domestic workers. Let us review, the domestic workers in any country are supposed to be the first labor poor to pull on for workers. But Indian employment is changing that. Indians in India claim superior job rights over US citizens. And apparently, a very high percentage of the Indian workers in the US agree with this sentiment as it helps them increase their concentration in the companies they currently work.

High Percentages of Indians is Now Bocking Out Non-Indian Employment in IT in a Major Way

“I started noticing that 99% of the interviewing managers at a particular client, a large corporation, were Indian. I also started noticing that 99% of all my fellow vendors were Indian as well. I thought it was strange but I was new to servicing a client in the Bay Area. After ages of watching top-notch candidates get rejected with no reason or false reaons, especially my white and asian candidates, I knew something was up. The candidates all said the feedback (when we got it) made no sense, that the interviewer was rude to them, that the interview was impossibly short, heavy accent was challenging, questions were surface level etc. They were just staging these “interviews” to try and cover their rears, so they could hire their fellow Indians.”

Again, this is another particular charge. Any interview can be rigged simply by the questions asked one candidate versus another if the intent is only to hire the Indian candidate.

Can a Domestic Worker be Successful in a Predominantly Indian Company?

If you have read this far, you can probably guess the answer to this.

“So, because of this, Indian based consulting companies like TCS, HCL, Tech Mahindra, Wipro have taken over major corporations and just ignore (or just pay off) any discrimination lawsuits thrown at them in the USA and Canada but, continue to discriminate. Unless you’re Indian, don’t even think about applying to Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Adobe, many federal and state gov’ts, Google, Apple, T-Mobile, Dell, etc. If you happen to land a job with a predominantly Indian company, they will sabotage you out of the picture.”

And then this comment, which seems to be nearly the same comment, but is from a different commenter.

“Check out Cisco, it’s no longer American company, but an Indian company. After years of quiet layoffs of American workers and replacing them with Indian workers. The CTO of Cisco, possibly a successor to John Chambers, is from India, has no computer science degree, and got famous for bungling a high flying project on bad data and poopooing iPhone while at Motorola. Same thing with Qualcomm, Microsoft, Motorola, VMWare and many smaller IT department around the country, including Target and Ebay. The latter was recently hacked while their Indian IT workers slept on their jobs.”

This is a another common comment that Indians seek to undermine non-Indian workers already in companies. This is a severe claim, but our experience on projects backs up this claim. We have observed the following phenomena working with many Indians.

If the Indian is your boss: He makes life very difficult for you. If the Indian reports to you: He undermines you. If the Indian is lower in the hierarchy, but not a direct report: He begins pleasantly but looks for some way to undermine you.

Being Setup to Lose by Indians

For domestic workers, there seems no way to win against Indians. This is another point of emphasis. The Indian worker does not need to be in a position of power over the employee. They can work to undermine them to look less capable then they are. It appears that the motivation is to have the domestic worker leave, and this allows an opening for the Indian workers to recommend another Indian, which then strengthens their hand within the company. The Indian worker does not see the job they have is merely a job. Instead, it is a strategic possession to be expanded to others in the “in-group.” The strategy is the group who can get more of their people into the company end up winning. This following quote from a different commenter describes the same thing.

“I can personally vouch that your average Indian IT engineer is very ethnocentric, clannish and completely un-american in every sense of the word. They do whatever they can to make sure that life for you (as a non-Indian) in their team becomes so hellish that you leave on your “own accord”. I’ve seen many of my friends just move on to other companies confronted by similar minded Indians. Some of them entirely left IT altogether. I think they have completely decimated non-Indian diversity at the workplace and they want every company to resemble Oracle and Cisco, both of them are almost 100% Indian now with a few token whites and other folks (nevermind that they are fighting lawsuits by well-meaning professionals regarding their hiring practices).”

This includes yet another statement that Indians make a concerted effort to force out non-Indians.

Indian Dominance in IT Recruiting

Indians have not only taken over IT jobs, but they have also taken over IT recruiting and forced out domestic IT recruiters. Our email inbox is frequently the recipients of IT recruiters that are primarily Indian. This takeover of IT recruiting has occurred over even a shorter period than the takeover of IT employment. It is now uncommon to find domestic IT recruiters. The only conclusion is that the domestic IT recruiters have been forced from the market. Secondly, when we compare the rates offered by Indians recruiters, the rates are always lower than for domestic recruiters. This is a shocking and unanticipated outcome of the H1-B Visa program. Initially intended for highly skilled candidates, now nearly anyone qualifies. And Indian immigration and workplace discrimination has not only reduced the domestic employment in IT, but domestic employees must now mostly go through Indian recruiters, many of whom are calling from India. It will be unsurprising if Indian recruiters prefer to place Indian candidates.

Rigging Job Descriptions for H1-B Entry

It is difficult not to notice how specific many IT job descriptions have become. Many job descriptions essentially describe a candidate that does not exist. There is a rule about H1-B Visas that the job description must be published for a certain amount of time, and then evidence shown to immigration that no individuals could be found that would fit the job description. This is very easily managed by creating such a ridiculous job description that no domestic candidates qualify. Now, the job can be opened to a candidate from India who will add those qualifications to their resume. There is no validation of the skills listed on the resume; they are primarily self-reported. This is the problem with the continual comments by Indian resources that the entirety of Indian immigration to the US under H1-B is based on skills. Skills can be added to resumes if the people filling out H1-B Visa applications declare that the individual from India has those skills. This is explained in the following quotation.

“Most people who apply for H1B have a Indian 3 year degree education which I strongly believe is no better than a High School Degree in United States. These 3 year degree holders take a 2 or 3 month computer training and land in United States stating fake experience. There are thousands of companies in India which aid these people file a H1B petition and secure visa. These IT companies where potential H1B aspirant claims to have worked for, exists only on paper. They answer verification phone calls from USCIS or US embassy, have a web site and a physical address but there is NO actual Programming or Development done by this companies. After landing in the United States, the same people, put 7 or more years of experience in the United States to get job.” – Petition2Congress

Which led a commenter to state.

“Therefore, the bottom line is that we don’t need Fake IT Professionals who make up their fake degrees and fake resumes and take away our real jobs which is not acceptable at all. And I request the US Senate, The US Congress, The Homeland Security, and the USCIS and Labor Law departments to take the needed steps and right measurements to stop all these fraudulent workers, “

This quotation on a similar matter was from The Guardian from back in 2014.

“Labor brokers providing Indian high-tech workers to American companies have hijacked a professional visa program, creating an underground system of financial bondage by stealing wages and benefits, even suing workers who quit. About 840,000 people from around the world work in the United States on temporary visas, intended to help companies seek uniquely talented employees for specific jobs. In the tech realm, labor brokers often sponsor the visas, then contract out the workers to technology companies or government agencies to build databases, test software and complete other technical projects.”

Once one investigates, it turns out H1-B Visa fraud is incredibly common. Again from The Guardian.

“It has been the source of the vast majority of India’s fraudulent documents tied to H-1B visa applications, according to a June 2009 cable from the US State Department unearthed by WikiLeaks. Inflated work experience was a typical problem, the cable said, adding that of 150 companies in Hyderabad investigated by the US Consulate, 77% were “fraudulent or highly suspect.””

Wikileaks released a document that was internally sent out from the consulate in Chennai on this topic with the following quotation.

“India wide consular operations are among the busiest in the world. Some states such as Gujarat and Punjab are traditional sources of migration out of India and faudulent applications from these areas are more common than from other regions of India. The state of Andhra Pradesh, in particular, its capital of Hyderabad, has been identified as a large center of documentary fraud which affects all Indian posts. An opinion poll published in the popular Times of India in January 2007 noted that 37% of the 1.1 billion Indians would emigrate if they had the chance. Most of India’s fraudulent applicants come from specific and easily defined regional areas within each consular district. These states have some of the most mobile populations in India and the largest concentrations of expatriate communities overseas, including in the United States. In New Delhi, cases originating from the Punjab comprise the majority of its IV and fraud caseloads, while the same can be said in Mumbai with Gujarat. Chennai and Hyderabad’s fraud workload comes principally from Andhra Pradesh. B1/B2 visa fraud is the most commonplace. Regionally-based fraud rings throughout the country, but especially in Hyderabad, continue to produce fraudulent documents for visa application and travel purposes. Some visa “consultants” and travel agents specialize in fraudulent experience letters and fake document packages, which include passport copies of false relatives, bogus financial documents, and affidavits of support.”

India scores 140 out of 180 countries in press freedom.

Indian Respect for Freedom of Speech and of the Press

India has historically never had any freedom of speech or the press. This is how India has remained as the twelfth most income unequal country in the world. This inequality is also why India is such a hotbed for bonded labor. To maintain this level of income inequality, suppression of freedom of speech is necessary. And most Indians will oppose this article. They will oppose even the right for it to be written. In fact, on a different topic and Indian employee of IBM did not like something published at Brightworks, and essentially claimed the right to state that it should not be published as we cover in the article Should an IBM Employee Determine What a Research Entity Publishes? Again freedom of speech is part of US law, it is respected in Europe and countries based on European systems, not Indian law, and the established preference is for Indian law…..but not in India, in the US. India cannot change internally because India has shallow freedom of the press. According to Reporters without Borders, India ranks 138 out of 180 countries in press freedom. Articles written in the Indian media have a distinct stamp of being censored or self-censored, and there is no Indian media outlet that is prominent or read outside of Indian readers.

Indian Immigration Beneficial for India?

Given the enormous transfer of wealth to people from India to the US, many of whom falsely qualified for H1-B status, one might think that India has greatly benefited. Well first, India’s population is around 1.34 billion, so as even though IT in the US and the other primary IT markets have become swamped with Indian labor, it is still a tiny fraction of the population in India. But one must also include all of the outsourced IT work in India and the jobs that only exist because of the IT connection to the primary IT markets. However, India’s income inequality is getting starkly worse, as the following quotation attests.

“As of Nov 2016, India is the 12th most unequal country in the world. [1] The richest 1% of Indians own 58.4% of wealth. The richest 10 % of the Indians own 80.7 % of the wealth. This trend is going in the upward direction every year, which means the rich are getting richer at a much faster rate than the poor.” – Wikipedia

India, a vast country either tied with or greater than China depending upon the statistics used, those with access to the international IT market, is still a small percentage of India. IT in India is similarly concentrated in just a few cites like Hyderabad. India already had debilitating income inequality before the rise of Indian IT workers. And India’s income inequality is increasing. Could it be that the income flowing into a small percentage of Indians, some of who work overseas and some of who work in India is hurting India’s political stability? That is, the IT industry creates a class of IT-based wealth that is distinct from the rest of India?

When one looks at India, there is no way that Indians will moderate the impulse to leave India. The flow has to be restricted within the primary IT markets.

In this way, the combination of overseas Indian IT workers and Indian based IT workers is increasing the income inequality in both India and the primary IT markets of the US, Western Europe, Australia, and Canada.

Finding Other Groups As Frequently Accused of Discrimination as Indians

Brightwork Research & Analysis is a research entity. We are known for tackling issues that almost no one else will. We approached this topic as a research question, and we found damning evidence against Indian employment or workplace discrimination that is only reinforced by what we have seen on many projects. This Indian employment discrimination is not merely limited to the US but is found in Asia and Australia, in Europe and Africa. The standard defense by Indians will naturally be that this is all a racist illusion by a white author. However, Indians are being accused of discrimination worldwide. And they are being charged with discrimination by non-whites. If this is all a giant racist conspiracy, it is not only extremely widely reported, but the same reports are coming in from many different areas. The author did not write all of the quotations in this article.

Companies in IT globally are becoming Indian at astonishing rates. IBM has so aggressively fired domestic workers and hired workers in India and Indian workers that they refuse to publish their employment by country. However, IBM has kept its rates where they were previously, which has allowed them to mask the overall decline of the company. It seems impossible for this to happen without something underhanded occurring. It is very difficult to find a field that has, in the space of a few decades, switched to dramatically over to a new group of immigrants. And not only a group of immigrants (which has never happened in US history) but a group of immigrants primarily from one part of India.

We could find no other race or group that was as frequently accused of employment or workplace discrimination as Indians. For these observations to be false, there would have to be a vast conspiracy to promote the reporting of accusations against Indians and no other group.

The author has witnessed this discrimination first hand, and we receive new reports of discrimination quite frequently.

The Issue With Higher Caste Indians India

An interesting quote came to us by a reader, which describes the issue of higher caste Indians in India.

The higher castes especially Brahmins & Banias are injurious not only to India but wherever they are penetrating. Indian bureaucracy is full of these castes called “Swarnas” who are highly prejudiced against Indian Muslims, Dalits, and subalterns in every walk of life. They soon may spoil the American system too. Note it they are concentrating only to IT sector since third rate IT institutes proliferated to award degrees for namesake. However, Indians having American degrees are really worthy but they are in the sectors other than IT. Thus visa restriction on IT sector can save US big corporations from the onslaught of mediocre IT professionals of India.

Advice on Enjoying the Indian H1-B Lobby Quiz

To see the full screen, just select the lower right-hand corner and expand. Trust us, expanding makes the experience a whole lot more fun.

Conclusion

The problems laid out in this article, as bad as they are, set to become even worse. The continual emigration of Indians to non-Indian countries is leading to negative consequences for domestic workers in each country.

The Large Financial Incentives to Continue Indian Immigration

Consider that Indians are now a highly concentrated interest group in each country that has accepted Indians to continue the various H1-B type programs. Fortunes have been made on Indian labor, promoting its continuance of the status quo. There is no opportunity to attain much wealth in India as low pay persists — for millions of Indians there only chance to improve their lives is to immigrate to a (primarily) European based country. The number of open slots only limits the number of people that will leave India. This hostility of work environment against domestic workers in areas ranging from Singapore to Australia to the US to Europe and elsewhere is part of how Indian workers are continually pushing domestic workers out of IT employment. Two sources dispute the demonstrated discrimination against non-Indian workers.

Indians: Indians will often say that all of these independent observations are incorrect. The strategy only works if it is not declared. If Indians were to say that they intend to bring practices of nepotism and discrimination over to the countries they immigrate to, then the game would be up. Indian Companies: Most of their statements revolve around disputing that they violated the employment laws or visa laws in the countries of the primary IT markets, or hiding the massive rise in Indian employment. Domestic Companies: These companies don’t address this issue. They continue to beat the drum that they need skills.

Selling a Fake Story About Indian IT Employment

Indian workers and employing companies use terms like skills when describing H1-B quotas and hiring, but this is an oversimplification of the actual factors that are driving H1-B and the highly disproportionate hiring of Indian workers. Other terms like income inequality, lower pay, job loss for domestic workers, the creation of hostile work environments for domestic workers, and workplace discrimination by Indians against non-Indians need to become more publicly associated with importing Indian workers.

Most Indians and many Americans have no idea that the rights they enjoy are because they were fought for by unions. Indians made no such improvements to living conditions in their country. This is one reason they seek to exit the country and to gain entry into countries where this had been done for them already. In speaking with several Indians, it is clear that they are entirely unaware of this history.

Major media outlets hide the union battles that have been fought in the US, because the behavior on the part of companies was so appalling, and because major financial interests do not want people thinking in terms of unions.

Notice how the share of income changes depending upon how strong and prevalent unions are. In IT, there has been a dramatic transfer of income away from domestic workers and towards the top 10% and to Indian immigrants. This has lead to dramatically fewer opportunities for domestic workers. This is the point of the H1-B program — it is not about skills, it is about altering the income distribution away from domestic workers. Nearly all of the immigration into the US over the past several decades has come at the top and bottom of the income ladder. This is further exacerbating income inequality, which has the impact of reducing the stability of the overall system. The major financial entities and employers want people to think that they don’t need unions. Unions would be an organizational unit from a different era. If unions had maintained their strength from the 1960s, its unlikely that the H1-B program would have ever been allowed.

The Undeniable Evidence of Indian Discriminatory Behavior

The evidence is piling up that this is a pattern that is applied by Indians globally. Indians bring their culture from India seek to use lower standards to undermine the standards in the countries to which they immigrate. Indians that migrate to the US or Europe will not stay in India and fight for changes in how women in India are treated, fight the corruption in India, fight for higher labor standards, but what they will do is immigrate to countries that have made these gains, benefit from these gains, but then undermine the workers in the developed world. As such, Indian workers are a threat to all domestic workers, regardless of how “cuddly” they present themselves in one on one interactions. From this, it is not difficult to predict that it will be very difficult for domestic workers to become employed in IT. This is because these jobs are increasingly going to be reserved for not only Indians already in developed countries but for future Indian immigrants and for Indians children of current Indian immigrants. If the pattern holds, then the children of Indian immigrants will also be highly prevalent in IT. Once most of the jobs are held by Indians, it will become tough to break into the field due to Indian workplace discrimination.

How Indians Rely on Not Being Called Out on Cheating

What this comes down to is cheating. And unless domestic workers begin to call out this cheating, the cheating will continue. Naturally, the entities performing the cheating do not want to admit to the cheating and want to keep as business as usual. Therefore they will adhere to the “skills” argument and most likely throw ad hominem or personal attacks at those that point out cheating. The entirety of the Indian takeover of IT jobs in the major IT markets is based upon one central hypothesis….that Indians have superior IT skills to all other workers — (not only the domestic workers but workers in the Andhra Pradesh region of India). Based on this argument, these workers essentially are demanding that most of the IT jobs in the major IT markets be handed over to these workers and that they are granted citizenship rights in the major IT market countries. However, once the topic is investigated, it becomes increasingly difficult to accept the premise of these arguments. US corporations are about to expand the H1-B program further, see this article for our take on this issue Why Are 47 Entities Lobbying in Favor of the H.R.1044 IT Immigration Bill? To see what politicians are sponsoring and co-sponsoring expanding the H1-B program, see the article What Politicians are Co-Sponsoring of the H.R.1044 IT Immigration Bill? If you have any stories you would like to share about Indian discrimination or problems with working with Indians in IT, contact us through the messenger in the lower right-hand corner.

Time to Wake Up Its Time for US Domestic Workers to Wake Up US domestic workers need to understand that Indians have been corruptly taking their jobs and that Indians plan to come to the US in ever greater numbers in the future. Their corrupt networks are already put into place in the US, with dominance over US IT recruiting, with their “underground” information network that immediately sends open positions to their Indian contacts in placement firms. Their intent is clearly to take over almost every job from US domestic workers. Many IT professionals will say in passing that while they do not like Indian IT, they have.. “a number of Indian friends.” It might be time to question if that statement is true. Does this behavioral pattern look like something friendly? Are your “Indian friends” stopping the Indian takeover of IT, or do they promise their friends back in India that they will help get them over to the US to take another job from a US domestic worker? There is mass discrimination by Indians against non-Indians in hiring. Are your Indians friends speaking up against this in a public fashion? Are they friendly as a way of gaining access to information they can share with their Indian network? Without cultivating a friendly exterior and making US “friends,” it would not have been possible for them to have taken over IT the way they have. Can you afford or take the chance of sharing information with your “Indian” friend? Are your Indians friends not from the same corrupt environment that has led to what we see today with Indians in the US in IT? How many of your Indian contacts on LinkedIn do you benefit from knowing, and how much information are you giving them by being connected to them? Sharing and Commenting The establishment media and enormous IT companies like IBM, Cisco, WiPro, etc.. do not want domestic US workers to know anything written in this article. If those that oppose this don’t get active, we all will continue to lose. So, please share this article with people you know to increase awareness of what is happening. See the full Brightwork Indian/IT Labor article library at this link. Also please comment by scrolling to the end of the article.

The Indian IT Poll

To help us create a database of feedback on this issue, please take our The Impact of Indian Workers Poll. (or click the image below).

This is what we think is the first poll that asks what domestic workers think about this issue.

Protecting Your Company from Indian IT Is Your Company Losing Because of Indian IT? All of these things listed above and much much more could be, and probably are happening to you if you have an Indian presence — through direct employment, consulting firm involvement, or outsourcing. We can analyze your operations and tell you how you are likely being taken advantage of by Indian IT, and what you can do about it. To find out more contact us.

References

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-infosys-settlement-idUSBRE9A70IC20131108

https://www.amnestyusa.org/the-worlds-worst-places-to-be-a-woman/

http://news.trust.org/item/20180612134519-cxz54/

*https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/bonded-labour/

https://rsf.org/en/ranking

*https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1303737-wikileaks-hyderabad-fraud.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/28/-sp-jobs-brokers-entrap-indian-tech-workers

https://www.petition2congress.com/ctas/most-h1b-holders-are-fake

https://www.ibm.com/employment/inclusion/our-culture.html

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613344/indias-water-crisis-is-already-here-climate-change-will-compound-it/

https://www.quora.com/Are-there-too-many-Indians-living-in-the-US-who-forged-or-faked-their-work-experience-or-educational-certificates-to-get-a-hold-of-a-US-H1-B-visa-If-yes-how-different-are-they-from-illegal-immigrants

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/india-wealth-inequality-growing-rapidly-180125084201143.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_India

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Failed-states-index-2009.png *https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/world/asia/12iht-letter12.html

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-Trends/India-s-IT-sector-feels-squeeze-of-higher-US-labor-costs

https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018

https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-bias-among-Indians-of-hiring-other-Indian-workers-in-the-IT-industry