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.
