In a message dated 7/30/07 6:25:14 P.M. Central Daylight Time, News@jobdestruction.info writes:
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1736 -- 7/30/2007 >>>>>
A new LA Times article exposes Hillary Clinton's chummy relationship with
India. Hillary Clinton made a big deal about bringing the world's biggest
bodyshop to Buffalo. Apparently the Indian special interests think it was a
big deal too:
The main lobbying organization for the Indian-American community,
USINPAC, cites the Tata deal as one of Clinton's top three
achievements as a senator -- and evidence of a turnabout, in its
view, from her past criticism of outsourcing.
Clinton rolled out the red carpet for Tata and according to her 10 jobs
were created. Wow! What a great achievement! Hillary helped to create ten
jobs for H-1Bs! In reality Tata imported nearly 500 H-1Bs for computer
programming jobs in upstate New York. Perhaps the importation of 500 H-1Bs
was one of her top two achievements -- so why didnt Hillary brag about
that?
Clinton regularly reinforces that view. When CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs,
an outsourcing critic, pressed her on the Tata deal in 2004, Clinton
responded: "Well, of course I know that they outsource jobs, that
they've actually brought jobs to Buffalo. They've created 10 jobs in
Buffalo and have told me and the Buffalo community that they intend
to be a source of new jobs in the area, because, you know,
outsourcing does work both ways."
The United States Inidia Political Action Committee (USINPAC) said that
Hillary Clinton used to criticize outsourcing but lately has softened her
rhetoric. What they actually mean is that Clinton used to talk out of both
sides of her mouth -- she would criticize outsourcing while at the same
time do everything in her power to export jobs to India and to expand the
H-1B visa program. Clinton's volume on anti-outsourcing talk has always
been in inverse proportion to the cash building up in her bank account.
Clinton's softened stance on outsourcing has a lot to do with money --
specifically money that her husband has been pocketing from Indian
outsourcers.
Three weeks ago, her husband drew applause at a conference of 14,000
Indian Americans in Washington as he extolled the benefits of
"open borders, easy travel, easy immigration." He said the
outsourcing debate bothered him because it failed to acknowledge the
contributions of Indians who settled in the U.S. The same day, he
headlined a fundraiser at the conference for his wife's campaign.
Don't think Hillary Clinton is the only one who kowtows to India. This page
by the Council on Foreign Relations lists the presidential candidates on
U.S. policy towards India.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/13848/candidates_on_us_policy_toward_india.ht
ml
Keep in mind that the CFR is the most powerful group of corporate
globalists in the world so it's no surprise that they think it's a mark of
honor politicians to support open borders and uncontrolled trade. Most of
the candidates on the CFR list either support free trade or they have
capitulated in other ways such as voting for the "United States-India
Energy Security Cooperation Act of 2006", which I call "Nukes for Mangos".
It doesn't seem to make any difference whether they are Democrat or
Republican -- it only matters whether they are in the pocket of the CFR!
The only candidates that look good on that CFR page are the ones that the
CFR said have unknown positions. In every single other case, the candidates
either voted for Nukes for Mangos, support expanded free trade with India,
or both. I was very disappointed that Tancredo voted for Nukes for Mangos,
although they made a point to mention that Tancredo is on their hit list
because he opposes H-1B. Ron Paul was one of the few who voted against
Nukes for Mangos but his voting record on H-1B is horrendous, and recently
he has made it quite clear that he will support increasing H-1B. Make no
mistake about it either -- when the candidates say they support free trade
with India what they are really talking about is that they will vote for
expanding the H-1B program so that more Indians can come here and take our
jobs.
To see my spoof video that was inspired by Nukes for Mangoes, check out
this youtube video:
Mangos that Glow in the Dark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgukFLIzOCw
For a more serious take on Nukes for Mangos, watch this video:
The Center for American progress put a more serious video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc9Y9YoU_XY
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.latimes.com/business/careers/work/la-na-buffalo30jul30,0,4444162,
full.story
Clinton woos the outsourcers that workers fear
The senator's efforts to bring an Indian firm to Buffalo, which yielded
'about 10' jobs, illustrates the bind she faces.
By Peter Wallsten
Times Staff Writer
July 30, 2007
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- To many labor unions and high-tech workers, the Indian
giant Tata Consultancy Services is a serious threat -- a company that has
helped move U.S. jobs to India while sending thousands of foreign workers
on temporary visas to the United States.
So when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) came to this struggling city
to announce some good news, her choice of partners was something of a
surprise.
Joining Tata Consultancy's chief executive at a downtown hotel, Clinton
announced that the company would open a software development office in
Buffalo and form a research partnership with a local university. Tata told
a newspaper that it might hire as many as 200 people.
The 2003 announcement had clear benefits for the senator and the company:
Tata received good press, and Clinton burnished her credentials as a
champion for New York's depressed upstate region.
But less noticed was how the event signaled that Clinton, who portrays
herself as a fighter for American workers, had aligned herself with Indian
American business leaders and Indian companies feared by the labor
movement.
Now, as Clinton runs for president, that signal is echoing loudly.
Clinton is successfully wooing wealthy Indian Americans, many of them
business leaders with close ties to their native country and an interest in
protecting outsourcing laws and expanding access to worker visas. Her
campaign has held three fundraisers in the Indian American community
recently, one of which raised close to $3 million, its sponsor told an
Indian news organization.
But in Buffalo, the fruits of the Tata deal have been hard to find. The
company, which called the arrangement Clinton's "brainchild," says "about
10" employees work here. Tata says most of the new employees were hired
from around Buffalo. It declines to say whether any of the new jobs are
held by foreigners, who make up 90% of Tata's 10,000-employee workforce in
the United States.
As for the research deal with the state university that Clinton announced,
school administrators say that three attempts to win government grants with
Tata for health-oriented research were unsuccessful and that no projects
are imminent.
The Tata deal underscores Clinton's bind as she attempts to lead a
Democratic Party that is turning away from the free-trade policies of her
husband's administration in the 1990s and is becoming more skeptical of
trade deals and temporary-worker visas.
Like many businesses and economists, Clinton says that the United States
benefits by admitting high-tech workers from abroad. She backs proposals to
increase the number of temporary visas for skilled foreigners.
The Tata deal shows the difficulty of proving concrete benefits to U.S.
workers from the visa system. Since 2003, the year its Buffalo office
opened, Tata and its affiliates have sought permission to bring more than
1,600 foreign high-tech workers to the state, including at least 495 to the
upstate region and 45 to Buffalo, according to government data. Tata has
brought additional workers into the country under a second visa program
whose numbers have not been disclosed.
Some U.S. worker organizations say Clinton cannot claim to support American
workers if she is also helping Indian outsourcing companies and proposing
more worker visas.
"It's just two-faced," said John Miano, founder of the Programmers Guild,
one of several high-tech worker organizations that have sprung up as
outsourcing has expanded. "We see her undermining U.S. workers and helping
the offshoring business, and then she comes back to the U.S. and says, 'I'm
concerned about your pain.' "
Among Indian American activists, Clinton's work with Tata has been seen as
a sign of her independence from outsourcing skeptics within her party --
and a break from the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, Massachusetts
Sen. John Kerry, who lambasted "Benedict Arnold CEOs" for shipping jobs
overseas.
The main lobbying organization for the Indian-American community, USINPAC,
cites the Tata deal as one of Clinton's top three achievements as a senator
-- and evidence of a turnabout, in its view, from her past criticism of
outsourcing. "Even though she was against outsourcing at the beginning of
her political career," the USINPAC website says, "she has since changed her
position and now maintains that offshoring brings as much economic value to
the United States as to the country where services are outsourced,
especially India."
Clinton regularly reinforces that view. When CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs, an
outsourcing critic, pressed her on the Tata deal in 2004, Clinton
responded: "Well, of course I know that they outsource jobs, that they've
actually brought jobs to Buffalo. They've created 10 jobs in Buffalo and
have told me and the Buffalo community that they intend to be a source of
new jobs in the area, because, you know, outsourcing does work both ways."
This month, she made a similar case to a conference of Indian workers in
Silicon Valley, saying she supported an expansion of visas. "Foreign
skilled workers contribute greatly to our U.S. technological development,"
she told the group via satellite.
Clinton acknowledged the strains on American workers and called for more
job-training programs. But her words seemed to distance her from those who
would end outsourcing. Increased U.S. job losses, she said, could cause
Americans to "seek more protection against what they view as unfair
competition."
The Tata deal, she said in a 2005 stop in India, exemplified the
cooperation that will "help to prevent the kind of negative feelings that
could be stirred up" by critics of the global marketplace. She called those
critics "short-sighted."
Today, on the campaign trail, Clinton often strikes a different tone.
Addressing union audiences and Democratic crowds, she does not highlight
her support for expanding foreign-worker visas. Instead, Clinton often
laments a system that, as she told a government workers union last month,
rewards companies for "moving our jobs overseas." "Outsourcing is a
problem, and it's one that I've dealt with as a senator from New York,"
Clinton said during a Democratic candidates debate in June. She said she
had tried "to stand against the tide of outsourcing."
Clinton aides say the Tata deal is just one example of her broader efforts
to help upstate New York. Whatever the results, said spokesman Philippe
Reines, the effort showed Clinton helping to build a high-tech future for a
region long focused on manufacturing.
Buffalo's population has fallen by half over 50 years, as automotive and
other manufacturing jobs moved overseas. Resentment is so high that voters
last year nearly dumped a longtime Republican congressman for an anti-trade
Democrat, who had made outsourcing his biggest issue.
For Clinton, a newcomer to New York when she ran for the Senate in 2000,
the upstate region was considered a challenge -- a traditionally
conservative area that did not participate in the economic prosperity
during her husband's presidency. So, as a candidate, she pledged to use tax
credits and other incentives to create 200,000 jobs in the region.
In 2002, Clinton took a group of Indian business executives on a tour of
the region and to a meeting with administrators from the state university
in Buffalo. The group included Tata Consultancy Services, an information
technology consulting firm that is part of Tata Group, a conglomerate with
interests in electricity, steel, aviation, cars and hotels.
At the time, Tata Consultancy had two offices in the state -- both in New
York City to service Wall Street clients.
But a year after the tour, the company flew Clinton to join its chief
executive, S. Ramadorai, in Buffalo for an announcement: It would open an
office there.
Tata also signed a memorandum of understanding with a university research
center to pursue discoveries in genetics, drugs and other areas. In a news
release, Tata said that deal "will eventually lead to opportunities for
training, recruitment and job creation in Buffalo."
"There was a sense of excitement on the part of the community," said
Anthony M. Masiello, Buffalo's mayor at the time, "to have a company like
Tata that would not traditionally look at coming to western New York."
But soon the company faded from public view, said Andrew J. Rudnick,
president and CEO of the Buffalo-Niagara Partnership, an economic
development group in which Tata was initially active. "They told us their
business strategy had changed," he said. "The reality is that the number of
people that Tata is employing here now doesn't seem to be significant."
At the University at Buffalo, Bruce A. Holm, director of a research center
pursuing projects with Tata, conceded that the partnership had not played
out as hoped. But he said that progress was still possible.
Tata officials say the company has hired 50 people from the Buffalo area in
the last four years but most have left or have been transferred to other
locations. They say the Buffalo operations remain important to the company
and a part of the civic life of the city.
But critics say that Tata has done more to undercut workers in upstate New
York than it has helped -- and that Clinton is wrong to argue that exposing
U.S. workers to competition from foreign workers is helping both groups.
Since Tata arrived in Buffalo, "the reality is that it probably created
many more jobs for workers overseas and displaced lots of American
workers," said Ronil Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester
Institute of Technology and a prominent critic of outsourcing.
A report released by two senators said that Tata was one of the biggest
users of foreign-worker visas in the United States, employing more than
7,900 visa recipients last year. The large number of visas suggests that
companies are circumventing laws designed to protect American workers,
Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in
their report.
Clinton and many other lawmakers have called for cracking down on visa
abuse. At the same time, she has backed an increase in the number of
foreigners admitted to the U.S. each year under the main type of visa for
high-tech workers. The cap is 65,000 each year; companies are seeking
115,000.
And her campaign continues to telegraph -- sometimes in front of Indian
American audiences -- that she sees benefits to a globalized world.
Three weeks ago, her husband drew applause at a conference of 14,000 Indian
Americans in Washington as he extolled the benefits of "open borders, easy
travel, easy immigration." He said the outsourcing debate bothered him
because it failed to acknowledge the contributions of Indians who settled
in the U.S. The same day, he headlined a fundraiser at the conference for
his wife's campaign.
Labor union leaders, who haven't decided whom to endorse for president, say
they have watched the Tata deal and Clinton's statements on outsourcing.
"People do want to see from her some recognition that the outsourcing of
these service jobs isn't a good thing for the U.S. economy," said Thea M.
Lee, policy director of the AFL-CIO. "It's a little bit of an open question
where Sen. Clinton's going to end up on outsourcing."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
peter.wallsten@latimes.com
--
(INFOBOX BELOW)
Visa activity
--
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced in March 2003 that the high-tech firm
Tata Consultancy Services of India was opening an office in Buffalo, N.Y.,
and would bring jobs to the area. Clinton later said the deal showed that
outsourcing firms could create jobs both in their home countries and in the
United States. Tata says it has created about 10 jobs in Buffalo and, since
2003, hired 50 local workers. But over that same period, Tata sought H-1B
visa certifications to import nearly 500 foreign computer programmers and
other specialists to upstate New York.
City H-1B visas* sought
Schenectady... 101
Webster... 94
Albany... 87
Rochester... 83
Buffalo... 45
Waterford... 40
Olean... 31
Syracuse... 10
Pittsford ... 3
Orchard Park... 1
Total ... 495
--
*H-1B visas allow U.S. employers to hire high-skilled international workers
for up to six years. Obtaining certification from the Department of Labor
does not necessarily mean the company secured visas, but that is the only
public indicator of where a company intends to deploy foreign workers.
Whereas H-1B certification data is public, similar information is not
available for L-1 visas, which accounted for more of Tata's workers in
2006, according to a U.S. Senate report.
Source: Times analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Division
of Foreign Labor Certification
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