As I mentioned in the comment below, this is the first excuse for such discrimination, as most of the times they do properly communicate and can effectively communicate the idea, but it’s the covert way of discriminating them. One of the examples I witnessed, someone was from Singapore -and in Singapore just like a lot of other countries, English IS native, i.e. taught early in life- but they do have a thick accents, and the candidate was eliminated because of that, and obviously the hiring manager made the same silly excuse like you so he can feel better about himself, that it will “hinder” the communications. As long as the communication can be conducted, anything else is pure linguistics bias, you don’t see such bias when an international team of scientists are working in a space station or similar projects for example, even though in a lot of cases they lack the vocabulary per se, and lacking such vocabulary did not indicate a lack of skill or intelligence either, let alone to be evaluated by an average IQ hiring manager.
Another case I witnessed was in Canada, where French is an official language, yet the hiring manager excluded one candidate because he had a thick French accent..
Technically speaking too, there’s nothing as “native English”, we all do have an accent to some degree, a lot of English vocabulary are taken from other languages, and even English speakers do have a lot of silly typos and mistakes in their writing all the time, including my writings in here, so it’s never an excuse.
>And speaking of discrimination, you wouldn't hire a paraplegic person as a nurse or firefighter, right?
That’s a poor analogy, you do have the tools to properly and easily compensate such linguistic disability, as easy as having someone double checking their writing or having one of these new AI spell check tools, etc., but we don’t have the proper technology and tools to compensate for a paraplegic to be a firefighter, yet, say in the future there are proven ex-skeletons that can help, then yes you are discriminating.
> That’s a poor analogy, you do have the tools to properly and easily compensate such linguistic disability, as easy as having someone double checking their writing or having one of these new AI spell check tools, etc.
If the hypothetical person in question had such tools, then we would not see their "handicap" right? So the discrimination would not have occurred...
If only there were a word for a level of language proficiency where the person's speech is perfectly intelligible, but where there are still audible clues about the person's linguistic background that could be used to discriminate against them, and if only this weren't a "hypothetical person" but OP said they were talking about strong engineers with mild accents in their very first post? To act like the candidates' english is too poor for them to be employable is being willfully obtuse at best and outright racist at worst. There's nothing particularly difficult about working with someone who has a bit of a lilt or a twang or what have you; in fact it is more fun than working at a workplace where everyone sounds the same.
I like this post. I too have sadly seen this many times in my career. The (supposedly non-discriminatory) "preferences" of the hiring managers are frequently... discriminatory! It's the worst when the hiring manager is mono-cultural and only speaks a single language (English). Most middle managers are looking to hire people that are a dumber version of themselves and easy to control -- "sheep", if you like. The rare middle managers try to hire people smarter than themselves.
The bit about:
hire a paraplegic person as a nurse or firefighter
I like how they picked a tiny sliver of jobs that might require full mobility. Thinking deeper: I am sure there are many nursing jobs that can be done from a wheelchair. And why not doctors? (See Dr. House, with a limb, a cane, and an on-again-off-again opioid addiction!) There are plenty of jobs that can done in a hospital and fire department that do not require all of your limbs. A lot of the work involves sitting in an office, typing on a PC.
Once, I had an office mate who had a single hand. Incredibly, he was a member of a "fast reaction" front-line support team. It was a small miracle watching him dash about the keyboard. It helped to open my mind about what was possible with modern technology.
I dont really disagree with your post over all, but you really should refrain from using fictionalized stories to support your real world public policy it never works out well. That is aside from the fact that that example is pretty poor as something that should be aspirational.
> and even English speakers do have a lot of silly typos and mistakes in their writing all the time
Interestingly, the mistakes non-native English speakers make are different from the ones native speakers make. Thus, excluding non-natives makes it more likely for certain kinds of mistakes to slip by. "There" vs "Their", etc.
Another case I witnessed was in Canada, where French is an official language, yet the hiring manager excluded one candidate because he had a thick French accent..
Technically speaking too, there’s nothing as “native English”, we all do have an accent to some degree, a lot of English vocabulary are taken from other languages, and even English speakers do have a lot of silly typos and mistakes in their writing all the time, including my writings in here, so it’s never an excuse.
>And speaking of discrimination, you wouldn't hire a paraplegic person as a nurse or firefighter, right?
That’s a poor analogy, you do have the tools to properly and easily compensate such linguistic disability, as easy as having someone double checking their writing or having one of these new AI spell check tools, etc., but we don’t have the proper technology and tools to compensate for a paraplegic to be a firefighter, yet, say in the future there are proven ex-skeletons that can help, then yes you are discriminating.