Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 3, 2007 12:48:50 GMT -6
Below are excerpts from a heartwarming LA Times article about the new queen of the Cheap Labor Lobby: Hillary Clinton.
As far as American workers are concerned, Hillary Clinton is public enemy #1.
Clinton woos the outsourcers feared by U.S. workers
By Peter Wallsten
7/30/07
"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....
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...an interest in protecting outsourcing laws and expanding access to worker visas....
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....
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."....
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....
The Tata deal, she (Clinton) 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."....
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.....
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....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....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."...."
Hillary Clinton's position on Outsourcing, H1B visas, and illegal immigration are now clear. She supports increasing all of them.
Clinton's a true champion of Wal-Mart, Corporate America, and the Cheap Labor Lobby. And she's the worst possible choice for American workers and the middle class.
As far as American workers are concerned, Hillary Clinton is public enemy #1.
Clinton woos the outsourcers feared by U.S. workers
By Peter Wallsten
7/30/07
"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....
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...an interest in protecting outsourcing laws and expanding access to worker visas....
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....
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."....
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....
The Tata deal, she (Clinton) 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."....
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.....
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....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....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."...."
Hillary Clinton's position on Outsourcing, H1B visas, and illegal immigration are now clear. She supports increasing all of them.
Clinton's a true champion of Wal-Mart, Corporate America, and the Cheap Labor Lobby. And she's the worst possible choice for American workers and the middle class.