Legal Question in Legal Ethics in New York

We hired an immigration lawyer to slear up some confusion the Indian consulate had regarding a marriage - the spouse's visa was held up because of this confusion. The lawyer told us he needed an indian lawyer to help gather statements and affidavits in India to prove the marriage legit and reffered us to one. He was very expensive but our US attorney said he was great and we should go with him. So we did. After the case was completed, the indian lawyer asked us to give the remaining $$ we owed him to the American lawyer because he (indian lawyer) owed him money for some travel. So we did. I later found out that the $$ we gave the American lawyer was actually a large refferal fee the indian lawyer paid the american lawyer for referring him the case (about 30% of the total fee we agreed to pay the indian lawyer). Is it legal or ethical for a lawyer to get that kind of a referral fee with out the client's knowledge? In fact, while misleading the client about the referral fee? It seems wrong to me. I know it would be very unethical in most other professional fields.

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