CLINTON'S INDIAN CORPORADO FRIENDS GIVE HER MONEY, TAKE U.S. JOBS AWAY

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PETER WALLSTEN, LA TIMES, BUFFALO NY - 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.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-buffalo30jul30,
0,6816044.story?coll=la-home-center


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