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Comment by yalogin | Hacker News Reader

> Like other large Silicon Valley employers, Cisco’s workforce includes thousands of Indian immigrants, most of whom were born Brahmins or other high castes.

This seems too important to just throw in unsubstantiated. I have never seen this kind of statistic.

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One could probably extrapolate from the statistic mentioned in the article (below). It seems plausible that the US visa system ends up taking in more people of high castes.

>In 2003, only 1.5 percent of Indian immigrants in the United States were Dalits or members of lower castes, according to the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania. More than 90 percent were from high or dominant castes. About 2.5 million people of Indian descent live in the country, including those born here.

It may be surprising or disconcerting to you, but it is an assumption that is usually borne out - I don't have figures for you, so I can't speak to this specific case. It is well documented that access to education, wealth, and most other factors that determine whether an Indian can emigrate to America for a highly-skilled job are extremely skewed in favour of the forward castes.

I was told by a colleague that most Indian folks you meet in tech in the Bay Area are the 1 percenters of India. Is that kind of what you're saying here as well?

They are certainly now, if they are were not before. Mobility like depends on opportunities you get, that starts from your parents social-economic status, the schools you attend, the connections your family has etc if you grew up in a city or a small town.

Caste strongly correlates with this, children of higher caste families tend to be richer or have rich relative, have extended family working in well connected places, have well educated parents and grand parents and have access to better schools.

Yes. Isn't that obvious? In general, any person from a developing country X, working in the US legally, is likely to be among 1% (not necessarily in terms of wealth but definitely in terms of opportunities, and, barring a few exceptions opportunities are proportional to wealth.) in country X.

Nah, more like middle to upper-middle class, with good access to education. 1 percenters are the ones with old family money and successful businesses (which they will inherit). They have no reason to leave the country for a tech job.

The concept of a middle class doesn't really apply particularly well to India in terms of it's use in economics. I have found in my experience that people who refer to themselves as upper middle class (in the Indian context) are usually simply embarrassed to admit that they are members of the upper class, since they don't see themselves as such. Economically, they undoubtedly are.

Edit: Having checked, the annual pretax income required to be in the top 1% of earners in India is 77000 USD.

Top 1% in India is just $77000 pre-tax income per year (5.5 LPA). This is comfortably middle & upper-middle class. I think what you are talking about is top 0.1%

1% is determined by wealth, not income.

The phrase used often is 'caste-class nexus'. I think that's a good way to put it.

The problem is twofold -

1. access to opportunities, and 2. The denial of opportunities to others through socio-economic-psycho-religious conditioning.

These 1 percenters you are referring to have used the latter to gain the status of the former.

Most US immigrants from distant countries are from rich families (not just India).

It generally takes resources to immigrate. Poor classes don't have those resources.

There are, of course, exceptions when a wave of immigration is driven by war or asylum seekers from a country leadership change.

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