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
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Visa activity
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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
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*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
