The Internet forces you to learn English

Create a website and offer your own language services.

That seems awesome sirtiman, but I still hope they'd be lenient in hiring freelance writers that are not US based. Yes, I'll think of it.

I know where you're coming from. Really, I do. I grew up in the US and got a degree from a top US university. Still, people assume that just because I live outside the US, my writing is inferior. There's really nothing you can do about it. The best you can do is change minds by making your customers happy.

Study. Study Study. As I always say, the English language is very dynamic. We should learn more how to make better content.. It's just that when an employer learns that you're Asian technically they consider your writing rife with regional tone.

How do we go about this? I hate the idea that people from the US get better treatment than those who know the language by heart than those people that naturally speaks them?

In some cases it's because the one who's hiring can't judge your English ability. Like in Korea and Japan they hire native speakers because they can't judge the level accurately, so they go for a native speaker to be safe. Oh, how it frustrates my Belgian born friends looking for an English teaching position...
When applying for work, you might get some use out of showing your test scores and certificates, I guess? Or having won a speech/writing contest. Not sure where you are promoting your services. On Freelancer they got those tests you can take which show up on your profile, if I remember well.

By the way, the opposite happens too. I often get approached by strangers to teach them English just because I'm not Asian. Some are genuinely surprised to hear that my mother tongue ain't English despite me being a whitey. Haha. Ah, man, it's stereotyping, but there's no way around the importance of English.
I never even intended to learn English. It kinda happened because there were no sufficient resources for my studies and activities in my own languages...

Hey, that made me think: what about writing gigs in your own language? Surely in that case you'll have the advantage

- Iris

Other countries where English is the primary language also get discrimanated against in favour of American writers.

Maybe it's about UK vs. US English. Is this what you mean?

No, but it might be a fair criterion.

"Criteria" is the plural, but that doesn't go with the singular indefinite article. Sorry, but you did ask.

I unreservedly agree.

You have to bear in mind that many of the people hiring these writers are doing so because they know their own English is inadequate for whatever they want to write. It follows from this that their assessment of others' language skills is often also not very hot, so they fall back on the (understandable, albeit often mistaken) assumption that native English speakers' writing is going to be acceptable. Annoying, perhaps, and sometimes misguided, but true.

How long will it be before there are more Spanish and/or Chinese websites than English ones?

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As for the internet? WWI, WWII, technology, and things like ASCII kind of gave hints how things were going. The A in ASCII even stands for AMERICAN! For DECADES though, it was the only real character standard on computers. Even EBCDIC is English based. Of course NOW companies are moving to UNICODE, which was drafted in 1988,

Steve

I haven't found this to be the case at all, but nobody is forcing you to sell to English speaking people. Sell to people in your own language. Your choice.

Sell your services well, and it will not matter your native language isn't English.

For example, while learning English, you were forced to learn proper grammar, not Jibberish, which in turn will give your clients an extremely high quality and very readable product.

Conversely, your competitors have picked up a lot of bad habits, of which they are not even aware, which translates into an inferior, unusable product.

You have the ability to make claims, which can be supported, that your native English competitors will not be able to make. You just have to recognize the advantages you have at your disposal and use them appropriately.