Clinton supports India H1B/Outsource
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Date: 2008-02-17, 8:14PM CST
Senator Clinton plans to take time out of her tightly packed presidential campaign schedule next month to deliver a speech to a large and influential alumni group. The well-connected crowd, expected to number about 4,000, hails not from the Ivy League or one of America's renowned state universities, but from a school half a world away, the Indian Institute of Technology.
The unusual speaking engagement is just one sign of the growing clout of the Indian-American community and how Mrs. Clinton is harnessing it to a degree previously unknown in presidential politics.
In April, a prominent New York hotelier and restaurant owner, Sant Chatwal, announced that Indian-Americans plan to raise at least $5 million for the former first lady's presidential campaign, an impressive sum even at the overheated pace of this year's fund raising. Later this month, almost 1,000 people are expected to attend an Indian-themed $1,000-a-plate dinner for Mrs. Clinton in Manhattan. There are also plans to bring in stars from India's film industry, known as Bollywood, for another Clinton campaign event later this year.
"Indians have never raised so much money, to the best of my knowledge, and I've been living here 24 years," Mr. Chatwal told The New York Sun.
The intense activity reflects a long-standing affinity for Mrs. Clinton on the part of many Indian-Americans, dating back to the state visit she and her husband, President Clinton, made to India in 2000.
However, the new fund-raising prowess also demonstrates how, after a generation or two of toil, another immigrant community has achieved the financial security and social confidence to venture into the American political arena.
"This Indian community has come of age, where they now understand they have to be involved in the political process," Ms. Gandhi said. "We are the new wealthy kids on the block, so to speak. We feel we should have a stake in our country's politics."
"The stars are aligned, in a way," an Indian-American political organizer in New York City, Udai Tambar, said. "The importance of money in politics is increasing over time, and at the same time you have a community, the Indian and South Asian community, that has amassed a fair amount of financial wealth."
When Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley hosted a $200,000 fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton last month, she was pressed about why America counts Saudi Arabia as an ally, despite its record of fomenting extreme, "Wahhabi" Islam through religious schools in its country and elsewhere.
Among Indian-Americans, Mrs. Clinton has a clear edge in the early maneuvering for the White House in 2008, but she is not competing unchallenged. Senator Obama of Illinois has also made significant inroads, particularly with the younger set, which finds appeal in his multiracial background. "His consciousness resonates more with the second and third generation," a Washington attorney backing Mr. Obama, Dave Kumar, 35, said. "When he talks about the skinny kid with the funny name, he's sort of describing every Indian-American kid who grew up in this country."
Another factor giving Mrs. Clinton a leg up is the presence of two Indian-American staffers at the top echelon of her campaign. Mrs. Clinton's policy director, Neera Tanden, worked as a policy adviser in the Clinton White House and later as an aide to the then chancellor of the New York City schools, Harold Levy. The traveling aide who shadows Mrs. Clinton at nearly all of her public appearances, Huma Abedin, is of Indian and Pakistani descent.
"We are not against all outsourcing. We are not in favor of putting up fences," she said in 2004 when an Indian-run firm with offices in Buffalo came under fire for shipping jobs abroad. Speaking to executives in California last month.
Oppose U.S. jobs being filled by H-1b/L-1 foreign workers
http://www.hireamericansfirst.org
Currently 85,000 top tech jobs each year are reserved by DOL to be filled by foreign workers on H-1b visas. Many others are filled by L-1 visas, which allows employers to bring in foreign workers while still paying them their foreign wage. In neither case are employers obligated to first consider qualified American tech workers.
These workers are often paid 25% below market and therefore are selected for contract positions over the top of qualified American applicants.
In 2008 Industry will be lobbying to increase the annual cap from 85,000 to as high as 195,000.
If have been harmed by H-1b workers - or just support reform of the H-1b program, please take 5 minutes to join new organization http://www.hireamericansfirst.org.
There is no membership fee.
Many members have indicated that they will speak to the media or join as plaintiffs in Programmers Guild class action suits - thus sharing in damage awards.
More information on the Hire Americans First project is here:
http://www.programmersguild.org/listmessages/2008Jan_eNewsletter.htm
http://www.madnamerica.com
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