I work in a nice group--most of the time. To describe it simply, I have two bosses who are actually not my bosses anymore but I respect them a lot because they're senior to me. No longer my bosses, they're my "colleagues"--they don't pay my salary and I'm independent of them. We do collaborate closely. I often consult with one of them when I hire new employees. And they often consult with me when they hire people, because I often have to help manage those people or prepare those people's projects.

So far so good. There's one exception to their consulting me regarding hires--when they're hiring anyone from their own ethnic group. In those cases, I'm not included in the interview or hiring decisions. But I'm still expected to work closely with these hires. Lately I've been looking for employees with a specific skillset. My former boss (the woman) decided to "help" me. Instead of finding someone in the States, whom we can legally pay given the restrictions on our funding, she immediately searched for someone in her native country. This project doesn't even involve her directly. Of course, she found someone from her country, interviewed that person with the other boss, and then they told me they'd offered the person the job.

This is someone I'm going to have to work very closely with. It's all my code that this person would potentially take, optimize in various ways, and return to me for integration. I'm furious that they again excluded me because it just isn't convenient or comfortable in their opinion to include an "outsider" in their conversation with their countryman. They wanted to speak their native language freely so they just conveniently don't include me. To me, this is discrimination. I'm always included in the hiring decisions, except when they hire people from their native country. In those instances, it doesn't matter how closely related to me the project is, it's like I don't exist.

I really don't know what to do, whether to write a professional email to the both of them pointing out that their behavior is discriminatory, or if I should just tell them that they'll have to find another project for the guy because I refuse to work with him.