In the Database division, the division that also makes most of the money for Oracle, most people including Directors, VPs, SVPS, etc. are Indians. Many are Chinese too. They have been in this company for the last 10 to 20 years. They understand all the politics of the company inside out and use it to their advantage to rule (exploit?) their subordinates. It is almost as if they have setup their kingdom in this company. You might be wondering how all of this relates to salary and hiring discrimination.
* Most of these Indians at the top of the ladder, seem to be hiring only Indians.
* These Indian SVPs and VPs hire Indians for cheap. A unique cultural thing about Indians is that they are obsessed about saving money, e.g. lowball prospective candidates; sometimes the negotiation can last for 2-12 months before an offer is made!
* It helps these VPs if there are Indian engineers or managers under these VPs. Indians don't counterquestion their superiors much. So when these VPs find insane ways of saving money, e.g. not spending the budget for team outings, project parties, etc., the Indian engineers seem to oblige. One team activity or team outing only once in 2 years is not unheard of in Oracle while our neighbourhood goes for such outings every quarter. Indian VPs rejecting employee's request for stationery is also not unheard of. It is necessary to hire Indians so that they don't question when VPs reject reasonable requests.
* Another thing unique about Indian culture is utter lack of respect for schedules. The SVPs define schedules for a product release in a random fashion without ever consulting the managers or the engineers. Guess what? The schedule is not met. The company remains in a never ending loop of reschedule, miss schedule, repeat. The same goes for meetings. Meetings start late. They end late. Nobody cares that there might be another meeting that people may have to go to. A few Americans might look upset but who cares about the minority! They can get away with this kind of disrespectful scheduling when the majority are Indians.
If someone claims that they hire Indians because they are more skilled than Americans, then I call bullsh*t. It is true that there are more Indian engineers than Americans but it is also true that for the number of people Oracle needs there are enough skilled Americans as there are Indians. So if the hiring was fair, one should see an equal number of Americans and Indians.
Disclaimer: I work for Oracle. I am Chinese. I love Indians. I have many Indian friends.