Outsourcers for Hillary! >>>

[Stephanie]

If you want to know where Sen. Clinton stands on trade, just ask Buffalo NY.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/30/2857/

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 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.’ ”

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/jul/30hillary.htm

---snip---

Now, a Los Angeles Times report cites the outcome of a pet Hillary project in Buffalo, upstate New York, as proof that the issue of outsourcing is far from dead.

'To many labor unions and high-tech workers, the Indian giant Tata Consultancy Services is a serious threat -- a company that has helped move US jobs to India while sending thousands of foreign workers on temporary visas to the United States,' begins the Los Angeles Times report.

It then details how Hillary announced in 2003 that TCS would set up a software development office in Buffalo and how Ratan Tata had said his company might hire 200 people.

'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,' writes LAT staff writer Peter Wallsten.

The report goes on to note that 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' -- have thrown their weight behind Hillary. The Chatwals' fundraiser for Hillary is also mentioned, without the New York hotelier's name.

And it underlines that the Buffalo deal, a sort of showpiece achievement for Hillary, who stresses that globalisation (read outsourcing) helps everyone, has generated just 10 jobs.

'As for the research deal Clinton announced with the state university, school administrators say that three attempts to win government grants with Tata for health-oriented research were unsuccessful, and no projects are imminent,' the report adds.

Senator Clinton, it seems, is aware of the criticism. 'Outsourcing is a problem,' the Los Angeles Times quoted her as saying during a Democratic candidates' debate in June.

The LA Times report adds that a report by two American Senators named Tata as one of the biggest users of foreign-worker visas in the US -- proof, the Senators said, that Tata was pushing American jobs to foreign workers.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/02/15/668610.aspx


2003: Clinton Called NAFTA a “Victory” For President Clinton. In her memoir, published in 2003, Clinton wrote, "Senator Dole was genuinely interested in health care reform but wanted to run for President in 1996. He couldn't hand incumbent Bill Clinton any more legislative victories, particularly after Bill's successes on the budget, the Brady bill and NAFTA."

1996: Hillary Clinton “Touted” President Clinton’s Support for NAFTA, Saying it Would Reap Widespread Benefit. On a trip to Brownsville, Texas, Clinton “touted the president's support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying it would reap widespread benefits in the region.”

[OhioChick]

1. K&R

:kick:

[Coexist]

2. being privately against something, while praising it publicly, is nothing to be proud of

http://www.ontheissues.org/2008/Hillary_Clinton_Free_Trade.htm

FactCheck: for NAFTA while First Lady; now against CAFTA

Barack Obama accused Clinton of flip-flops on trade. Obama said, "Senator Clinton in her campaign has been for NAFTA previously, now she's against it."

Obama is partly right concerning the North American Free Trade Agreement. Clinton's views on NAFTA have shifted, but they shifted prior to her official run for the White House. Back in 1998, in a keynote speech given at the Davos Economic Summit, Clinton praised business leaders for mounting "a very effective business effort in the US on behalf of NAFTA," adding later that "it is certainly clear that we have not by any means finished the job that has begun." But by 2005 she was expressing reservations about free trade agreements, voting that year against the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). And she told Bloomberg News in March 2007 that, while she still believes in free trade, she supports a freeze on new trade agreements--something she calls "a little time-out."

[Stephanie]

8. Her statements change depending on who her audience is >

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/30/2857/

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.”

[truedelphi]

14. Someone should tell the Clintons about a new technology marvel

Called the internets (maybe Poppy Bush could mention this to Bill the next time they golf together)

Campaigning is different now than in 1992 or '96.

If you say you are for war to the VFW at 10Am and then attend a peace activists' group at 2Pm, both events might be on the internets by dinner time.

And people can see what a lying liar you happen to be.

That wasn't possible back when Bill was running.

[Stephanie]

15. There's a thread with a video clip of her on MTP saying NAFTA was "a good thing"

Just like Martha, Hillary knows a "good thing" when she sees one - good for HER, anyway.

[truedelphi]

16. I'll checkit out. n/t

[UALRBSofL]

17. FLDEM5 That's what she has expressed in the debates as well.

Now, lets take a look at "Free Trade". Free Trade is not the ugly words many on the GD-P board make it out to be. Actually, Free Trade is pretty much split down the middle of acceptance by liberal democrats. Obama is also in favor of free trade as well. The reason the issue has been brought up in Ohio is because of all the organized labor. These two candidates need to be honest about where they stand and what they believe would best help the country. What I'm seeing is both candidates fudging on there issues a little as they travel to different regions of the country pandering for votes. Lets all get real about this. The candidates have good intentions but they are both after the votes.

[jillan]

3. Obama is a liar on Nafta - here ------>

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/14/did-hillary-clinton-reall_n_86674.html?view=print

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/report_obama_campaign_wrong_on.php

He voted against protecting workers against Nafta
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00232

And he recently supported the expansion of Nafta with the Peru Trade Deal.

[davidwparker]

4. then Hillary should have renounced it. Can't she see that a large part

of her campaign's problem is that we DON"T want that NAFTA-signing Clinton back in the WH?

She saw NAFTA-signer as an asset when in fact, many of us sees him as a liability. Enough of him!

[Stephanie]

11. She can't renounce it - where would she get her campaign donations from?

She's certainly not going to do anything to offend her corporate sponsors!

[nebula]

5. Obama is almost as bad as Hillary sometimes

I support him only because he's the lesser of two evils.

[Stephanie]

13. Really?

What outsourcing companies has he courted?

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/30/2857/

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.

[ChromeFoundry]

6. Is this another case of

her being for it before she was against it?

[Stephanie]

7. Precisely.

And of having it both ways.

[truedelphi]

9. She was in Silicon Valley some several months ago

Giving a speech to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that she was their natural choice, as she was bound and determned to offer them as many HB 1 visas as they wanted.

She also went on to say that we need to find ways to promote education among the nation's youngsters.

Quite an obvious disconnect: why should Suzie and Johnny study calculus if the jobs that math prowess used to land (backin the day) are not going to go to them anymore anyway?

[Stephanie]

10. She's the corporatists' dream girl.

All her posing otherwise is a sham.

[Stephanie]

12. Say TaTa to your JOBS! Hillary's coming to take them AWAY.

Is anyone listening?

[OhioChick]

18. *Crickets* n/t

[Stephanie]

19. Yep

Clinton's fans are never around when the issues are under discussion.