One of Hillary Clinton's favorite lines in her stump speeches is that America needs someone who will "fight for the middle class" and workers' rights.
She regularly rails against the now-common "outsourcing" of jobs to developing economies such as India and China.
But as experts in the area of outsourcing will note, Clinton was for it before she was against it.
"She was known as India's senator when she was in the U.S. Senate," said Sara Blackwell, an immigration attorney and blogger at ProtectUSworkers.org.
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On Page 303 of Michelle Malkin's book, "Sold Out: How High-tech Billionaires and Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels are Screwing America's Best and Brightest Workers," she discusses the H1-B program and how Hillary Clinton was one of the pioneers of outsourcing American jobs to India and her connections to some of the most prominent companies involved in shipping middle-class jobs overseas.
"Accenture, Tata, Infosys, she gets lots of money from them. She was at an (Indian-based) Infosys grand opening and she cut the ribbon," Blackwell said.
As Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., she played a key role in bringing a Tata software development office to Buffalo while representing New York in the Senate.
When questioned by CNN's Lou Dobbs about Tata's role as an outsourcing giant, she used classic Clinton chicanery to dodge the facts.
"They’ve actually brought jobs to Buffalo. Outsourcing does work both ways,” she told Dobbs in 2004.
Tata told local media it might hire as many as 200 people to staff the Buffalo office.
The L.A. Times reported several years later in 2007 that Tata, which called the arrangement Clinton’s "brainchild," employs "about 10" people in Buffalo.
Tata has also contributed $35,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
Clinton is also tied to Infosys, another leading outsourcing firm. It donated $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
And the ties run deeper still.
Clinton has been 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, the L.A. Times reported.
Her campaign has held three fundraisers in the Indian American community, one of which raised close to $3 million, its sponsor told an Indian news organization.
Tata and Infosys have been linked to controversial measures in which companies force American workers to train their own foreign replacements, who enter the United States on temporary visas, before outsourcing the jobs overseas. The Department of Labor is investigating both companies after a bipartisan request from the Senate.
“We’re pleased to hear that the Labor Department is taking a first step to stanch this tide of visa abuse,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) said in a joint statement earlier this year. “A number of U.S. employers, including some large, well-known, publicly-traded corporations, have laid off thousands of American workers and replaced them with H-1B visa holders."
The Clinton Foundation itself has used H1-B visas to hire foreign workers instead of Americans for white-collar positions.
Available data shows the foundation sought to hire up to 130 foreign graduates, according to Breitbart.
That’s roughly half the 250 IT jobs Disney outsourced last October, reigniting political debate of an outsourcing program that hits the middle class particularly hard.
H1-B visa holders are allowed to stay in the country for six years, but they must be sponsored by one specific employer. If they get fired, they must leave immediately. After six years, most H-1B workers return home with the experience that helps them compete against U.S. professionals in the global marketplace.
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said that under a President Hillary Clinton, "visa policy will be for sale to the highest bidder and jobs will go to the lowest bidder."
"I'm not at all surprised by Clinton's support for the donor class's cheap labor agenda," says Vaughan. "She is clearly more interested in raising money than safeguarding opportunities and livelihoods of Americans."
A nationwide body of Indian-Americans was launched by Clinton's campaign last month to support the former secretary of state, hinting that an Indian-American could also be appointed under her presidency, NDTV reported.
The organization named "Indian-Americans for Hillary Clinton" was launched in a Maryland suburb of Washington by Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta.
Podesta told a gathering of Indian-Americans that the relationship between India and the U.S. would reach a new level after Clinton is elected president.
"One of the things that she is committed to having a broad diverse cabinet than any administration. And I think, as senator and as secretary she showed that commitment by appointing Indian-Americans to positions of responsibilities, and I think you should expect that as president of the United States," Podesta said.
The business model for companies like Cognizant, Tata and Infosys is to bring in foreign workers on temporary visas and contract with American companies looking to lower their labor costs and boost profits. The company's American workers will be forced to train the foreign guest workers, who then return to their home country to teach people at companies there how to do the Americans' jobs.
The American corporation not only reduces its labor force, but it sheds expensive payroll that includes health insurance, taxes and workers' compensation costs.
"So when Disney says they are eliminating their IT department, that's true," Blackwell said. "They are eliminating the American part and offshoring the remaining part."
Blackwell said Hillary Clinton is about as anti-American worker as any candidate could be. She was pummeled by Bernie Sanders on this issue in the debates and conveniently shifted her position – and for good reason.
Polls show that white-collar outsourcing is extremely unpopular. A 2014 poll showed that “nearly 9 out of 10 [respondents] believe that U.S.-born workers and legal immigrants already here should get first preference for jobs."
So when she meets the presumptive GOP nominee, Donald Trump, in a debate, don't expect her to tell the truth about her record in the Senate and with the Clinton Foundation, Blackwell said.
"If she gets into office, we will lose so many more jobs," she said. "She is so bought by these companies, it is unbelievable."
Blackwell said nearly all the major the insurance companies and big banks have been offshoring jobs, as have many hospitals, retailers and wireless communications companies.
"They pick an industry, they strip it, and then they move on to the next industry," she said. "Toys 'R Us did their accounting department, and many are doing their IT and desktop positions."
And jobs aren't the only thing being lost in this scheme. Your privacy is also being outsourced.
"Every single one of these insurance companies and banks, all the American employees' data are overseas in India," Blackwell said. "Cell-phone companies are notorious for it as well, especially Verizon and AT&T. So all of our personal data is overseas, and if someone wants to hurt American people they don’t have to come to the United States. It's already overseas, and they do not have to abide by American standards, only their own standards. In India, for example, the HIPPA (privacy) laws don't apply."
Any function that involves technology or that is performed on a desktop is in danger of being outsourced in the current climate, Blackwell said.
"Anything technology, customer service, some accounting, point of sales stuff, dealing with customer problems that come in, anything that doesn’t have to be done specifically, physically in the U.S.," she said.
While high schools continue to push more American students into STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), people are graduating from college with STEM degrees and having to go work at Walmart, Blackwell said.
"The companies that are benefitting from this like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Disney's Bob Iger, they lobby and have created loopholes; they've bought all these politicians and America just doesn’t stand a chance because everybody's bought."
The fact that Congress has an "Indian Caucus" speaks volumes.
"And the Indian prime minister is coming at the end of June to tell them why this is good for America," Blackwell said.
The program is beloved by corporate America not only because it offers a cheaper alternative to hiring U.S. workers, but it also gives them more control. Foreign guest-workers on H1-B visas are here at the invitation of their U.S. employer, and any misstep by them can easily result in them being given a one-way ticket back home.
"So these people if they complain they lose their visa and have to go home, so who's going to complain?" Blackwell asked. "Lots of times they live in really horrific conditions like nine to a room."
And they are not any smarter or well-qualified than their American counterparts. Often they are quite the opposite, Blackwell said.
"We're being told these corporations need qualified workers. I've dealt with thousands of U.S. workers who have been displaced, and I've dealt with Indian workers, and they're not sending over here these brilliant people with unmatched skills. It's not like they say, 'Oh it's unfortunate we lost these jobs, but we just don't have enough smart people here.' You can ask anyone who's done knowledge training; they all tell you the same thing. I've never heard that the person they train was at all qualified for their job.
In India, the tech jobs will pay $10,000 to $12,000 a year, but it can take three or four people to do one American's job.
"The ones that stay and don't get cut, they talk about all the screw-ups," Blackwell said. "You hear those stories all the time."
Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, said the U.S. graduates more people from college with STEM degrees than there are STEM jobs every year. That has put a downward pressure on wages.
"Real wages for STEM workers, including those in technology, show little real growth (above inflation) since 2000," Camarota said. "There simply is no evidence of a labor shortage. Employers like this program because it gives them access to workers who have fewer choices and are more captive. Also foreign nationals new to the United States will tend to be more willing to put up with weak benefits or poor working conditions or lower wages. This is especially true because these workers in many case are hoping their employer will someday sponsor them for a green card (permanent residency)."
What's not to like from the employer point of view?
"But the key question is: How, at a time when we are not creating enough middle-class jobs, does it make sense to bring in more workers to compete for middle class jobs?" Camarota says. "It is absurd to argue Americans do not want to work with computers."