indica News Bureau-
A Korean American engineer has sued chipmaker Intel Corp for allegedly allowing its Indian managers to illegally favor Indians in hiring and promotions, the far-right news outlet Breitbart reported.
According to Hoseong Ryu’s lawsuit filed in California, “Throughout the course of his employment, Ryu has worked in an environment with management that favors employees who are from India or of Indian or South Asian descent and disfavors employees who do not fall into that category”.
The suit said Intel’s actions occurred in circumstances “that give rise to a reasonable inference of discrimination” based on racial and national origin.
The suit comes at a time when a growing number of Americans and legal immigrants argue that Indian managers and recruiters are excluding young and experienced Americans from jobs in the country’s software industries and favoring Indians instead.
The evidence of routine discrimination is piling up amid multiple lawsuits, testimony from sidelined Americans, and statements from Indians.
“I have had four on-site interviews since being laid off and interviews with 18 people during those interviews,” a US graduate told Breitbart News Sept 30. “A full 13 of them appeared to have been born in India and only one seemed to be likely US-born. That may have been partially bad luck … Still, it seems to point out a risk of one nationality getting too high a representation in the hiring process.”
The concerns spiked during the charged debate last month over Utah senator Mike Lee’s pending S386 bill, which would fast-track at least 300,000 Indian visa workers toward green cards and permanent US technology jobs, including in management and recruiting jobs. The bill was blocked by Sen Dick Durbin, D-IL.
The plaintiff in the Intel lawsuit, Ryu, moved to the US in 1996 and became a citizen in 2009. In that period, the trickle of foreign tech workers became a flood. Roughly 800,000 Indians now hold jobs as visa workers in the US, including many who work as managers and recruiters for jobs in the US.
The lawsuit began by describing Ryu’s hiring interview, where the one Indian on the three-man hiring panel allegedly argued for his rejection. According to the document, “After the interview, [Bhavendra] Matta discouraged the hiring of Ryu. Matta made a statement to [John] Cuder to the effect that Intel should not hire Ryu because he was ‘Korean, married, and had a child’. Matta further made a statement to Cuder to the effect that ‘it would be easier to hire a younger, unmarried Indian man’.”
The lawsuit also named former senior firmware engineer Ravi Gopalan, a member of the management of Ryu’s team, as openly favoring the hiring and promotion of employees from India. Ravi’s rationale was that “Indians are harder workers”.
Throughout Ryu’s tenure, management of the System Integration Team, primarily composed of personnel from India, openly showed favoritism toward employees from India or of Indian or South Asian descent in the use of vacation and leave, the lawsuit further said. Most employees who are not Indian or South Asian receive only two to three weeks of vacation or leave per annum. Those from India or of Indian descent typically receive as much as six weeks in a year.
In or about Dec 2017, Ryu met with then Joint Team Manager of the System Integration Team Srikanth Amaraneni, also originally from India. On or about Feb 9, 2018, Intel named Ramesh Kondru (from India) manager of the team. This was a promotion for Kondru who had previously worked as a system debugger. By contrast, Ryu had worked as an integration engineer and served as de facto manager of the team for about 18 months. He had also established the System Integration live test rack for Intel in the US.
On or about March 2, 2018, Ryu initiated an internal ‘open-door’ Investigation at Intel in which he alleged that his non-promotion was retaliation by Amaraneni based upon a previous complaint to the Human Resources team about Amaraneni. The internal investigation was inconclusive but revealed that the job had been offered exclusively to Kondru.
Since 2016, Intel has asked the government for 6,500 more H-1B workers, according to MyVisaJobs.com, Breitbart said. The company has also asked for 3,000 green cards for H-1B and other visa workers who are already employed at Intel, according to federal data collected by the site.
