Unions Press Clinton on Outsourcing Of U.S. Jobs

As Clinton pursued a Senate seat in 1999, the Indian American community stepped up its giving. Indian businessman Sant Singh Chatwal raised $500,000 for her in his Upper East Side penthouse, including $210,000 from 14 entities connected to him. Chatwal is now a finance co-chairman for Clinton's presidential campaign, and Clinton aides said they have counted more than $2 million in contributions raised at Indian American events.

Some Indian American connections have benefited the Clintons personally, too. Vinod Gupta, the founder of a Nebraska data-mining firm, has donated more than $1 million to the Clintons' political causes while also paying the former president at least $3.3 million as a business consultant.

Gupta hosted Bill Clinton at the dedication and groundbreaking of the two-story Hillary Rodham Clinton Mass Communication Center he is building on the campus of a women's technical school in rural India. The institution is designed to train India's workforce to better compete in the global marketplace.

Among labor officials, a nagging question about Hillary Clinton's commitment to protecting U.S. jobs stems from a deal she helped broker for Tata Consulting, one of India's largest technology firms. In 2002, Clinton helped Tata land an agreement to open an office in New York state and to work with a Buffalo area university to create at least 100 jobs in the depressed community.

But today, Tata employs just 10 workers at the New York training center while sending much of its work to its predominantly Indian workforce, which includes many on temporary U.S. visas.

Tata is one of the largest users of the temporary-worker visas that have allowed U.S. technology companies to fill jobs with high-skilled, lower-paid Indian workers. It used nearly 8,000 such visas last year, according to a recent Senate report.

As a senator, Clinton has repeatedly supported that program and backs raising the cap for annual visas from the current 65,000 to 115,000.

Today, Clinton's office plays down the Tata deal that she once trumpeted. "Senator Clinton's priority has been to support local businesses and entrepreneurs in order to spur job creation and economic growth throughout New York state, and this is just one of the literally hundreds of cases where she did so," Reines said.

Staff researchers Alice Crites and Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.