Hillary Clinton’s State Department Allowed Millions of Taxpayer Dollars to Be Spent Helping Companies Outsource American Jobs

outsourcing

Hillary Clinton’s State Department oversaw a government agency’s expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars to help companies outsource American tech jobs to foreign countries.

In 2010, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars building schools in Sri Lanka and Armenia, specifically to increase those countries’ outsourcing capacity to take away American jobs.

“The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent federal agency that receives overall foreign policy guidance from the Secretary of State… USAID plans its development and assistance programs in coordination with the Department of State,” according to the State Department’s website.

The head of USAID at the time was Rajiv Shah, who was a former top director with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Microsoft has been one of the nation’s biggest lobbyist for expansive immigration policies, which would allow corporations to replace American tech workers with foreign laborers who will work for a fraction of the Americans workers’ salary. For example, in 2014 Microsoft pushed for greater admissions of low-wage foreign workers into the United States at the same time as the tech giant was laying off 18,000 of its own employees.

In August of 2010, trade magazine Information Week reported on USAID’s plan to use taxpayer dollars to help companies outsource American jobs. In a piece titled, “U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers,” Information Week wrote:

Despite President Obama’s pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia… Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent’s low labor costs.

Under director Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency. USAID is contributing about $10 million to the effort…

In a separate report, Information Week documented the government’s efforts in Armenia:

Even as controversy mounts over its funding of IT outsourcers in South Asia, the U.S. Agency for International Development has announced a program under which it will partner with the government of Armenia—a nation anxious to lure computer work from American shores–to promote the development of the country’s information technology industry…

Armenia is looking to establish itself as a center for low-cost IT and engineering work outsourced from the U.S. and other Western countries. USAID, a taxpayer-funded federal agency, did not disclose how much it’s contributing to Armenia’s efforts to become a global IT competitor. Among the U.S. companies participating in the project is Oracle’s Sun Microsystems unit….

USAID’s efforts to help build up IT and outsourcing industries in Europe and Asia would seem to run counter to Obama’s public pledges to keep more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., where unemployment in the technology industry continues to run high.

“This action is contradictory to Obama’s commitment to create jobs and revitalize the American economy,” a spokesperson for WashTech, a Communications Worker of America affiliate that represents professionals, told Information Week. “Any taxpayer money that is appropriated to train workers to take American jobs should, without question, be directed toward the unemployed and the underemployed in this country.”

As Breitbart News has extensively documented, the Clintons have financial ties to the India-based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HCL, which specialize in outsourcing and offshoring, and are among the top H-1B and L-1 visa employers in the U.S.

Together, HCL and Tata have stolen tens of thousands of U.S. jobs from American workers all across the country. HCL and Tata are responsible for the layoffs of American workers from Disney, Southern California Edison, Northeast Utilities, Xerox, University of California, Siemens and countless others, and replace them with foreign workers on visas.

In a 2004 interview with then-CNN host Lou Dobbs, Clinton defended the anti-American worker business model of these India-based outsourcing firms, declaring: “We are not against all outsourcing; we are not in favor of putting up fences.”

Similarly, in 2005, the India Review reported that during a trip to India, “Senator Clinton allayed apprehensions in India that there would be a bar on outsourcing. ‘There is no way to legislate against reality. Outsourcing will continue,’ she said.”

Clinton’s extensive financial, personal and political ties to these India-based companies prompted the campaign of then-political rival Sen. Barack Obama to label her “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)”– implying that Clinton represents foreign nations and foreign citizens rather than her own American constituents.

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