Yes.  Below is only a small sample.  This happens all the time.  The corporations and governments which so vociferously claim they want to help minorities “up the ladder of business” are actually eager to hire wealthy foreigners with the right skin colors, because those foreigners come with capital to invest and usually with previous experience, even their own companies.  They’re much less of a risk than American minorities who have no track record in business.  Why help an American minority person when you can just give a set-aside to a dark-skinned millionaire?  Immigrants need only come into the United States for 5 years to qualify as “disadvantaged minorities,” no matter how much money they’re worth. 

Be aware that while foreign millionaires are qualifying as “disadvantaged minorities,” the real disadvantaged minorities of America are being shunted aside as much as white businessmen who also deserve a fair shot at a contract. 

Consider the following:

“In the United States, affirmative action has been a boon to those already more fortunate.  A study of a random sample of minority beneficiaries of government contracts set aside by the Small Business Administration showed that more than two-thirds of these beneficiaries had net worths of more than a million dollars each. (continued)  . . .
“Because minority immigrants are eligible for affirmative action, even though they have obviously suffered no past discrimination in the United States, members of the Fanjul family from Cuba, with a fortune exceeding $500 million, have received government contract set aside for minority businesses.  An absolute majority of the money paid to ‘minority-owned’ construction firms in Washington D.C. during the period from 1986 to 1990 went to Europeans businessmen from Portugal.  Asian entrepreneurs have likewise immigrated to the United States and then acquired preferential access to government contracts.”  (Thomas Sowell citing Terry Eastland, “Ending Affirmative Action,” and Bob Zelnick, “Backfire: a Reporter’s Look at Affirmative Action, 1996, respectively)

Peter Wong, CEO of Roy Smith, Inc. of Detroit:   Wong, originally from Hong Kong, was the financial officer for the Detroit welding company Roy Smith in the late 1970’s, then purchased the company after working there for 20 years.  With flat revenues, he decided to “launch a two-fold strategy” including applying to gain minority certification.  He is now a “disadvantaged minority” and gets favors because of it.   Let’s ask ourselves again, who is the minority content program meant to help?   Disadvantaged Americans who need help to get on the ladder of success, or a wealthy immigrant businessman who is already a millionaire and CEO of a company and suddenly discovers that he is, according to the strict oversight and certification rules of the Michigan Minority Business Development Corporation, a “minority”? 

"Because minority immigrants are eligible for affirmative action, even though they have obviously suffered no past discrimination in the United States, members of the Fanjul family from Cuba, with a personal fortune exceeding $500 million, have received government contracts set aside for minority businesses."  (Affirmative Action Around the World, Thomas Sowell, p 121)

“(Beneficiaries) include not only various immigrants from Latin America, Europe and Asia, but also Eskimos who have been granted preferential status in Virginia, where it is doubtful that many of their ancestors ever lived, much less suffered discrimination.”  (Thomas Sowell, AAAW, -136

“Minority businesses preferentially awarded government contracts can then turn over the actual work of fulfilling those contracts to others, in essence collecting a royalty for letting non-minority firms rent their minority status to acquire business from the government. . . .A Baltimore grand jury was kept busy for months exposing such ‘fronts’ and an investigation of ‘disadvantaged business enterprises’ in Indianapolis ended up decertifying more than one-third of all businesses with that designation.”  (Thomas Sowell, AAAW, p137)

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