Clinton taps clout of Indian-Americans

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is wooing wealthy entrepreneurs with ties to India, seeking to tap the growing political clout of Indian-Americans in California's Silicon Valley.

Clinton spoke Friday by live video feed from New Orleans to nearly 4,000 businesspeople in Santa Clara attending the annual alumni conference of the Indian Institute of Technology, one of the world's most elite university systems.

Clinton _ the only Republican or Democratic presidential candidate to accept an invitation from the IIT _ reiterated her call for more H-1B work visas for highly educated immigrants, an issue of deep concern to the Indian and Indian-American executives and engineers in the audience.

She did not shy from characterization of the pain of offshore outsourcing, the exporting of technology jobs to low-cost workers in countries such as India, China and Russia. The United States has sent tens of thousands of high-paying computer programming and engineering jobs to developing countries in recent years.

"Workers in the United States are concerned about outsourcing, and I think they're right to be _ but so should all of us who value the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and India," Clinton said. "If the U.S. continues to outsource jobs to India in increasingly large numbers, people will increasingly feel insecure and increasingly seek protection."

Her appearance came less than a month after rival Barack Obama's campaign sent a sarcastic memo to reporters criticizing Clinton's ties to India. The memo characterized the New York senator as the "Democrat from Punjab," a reference to a joking introduction of Clinton by Rajwant Singh, national chairman of the Sikh Council on Religion and Education.

Prominent Indian-Americans immediately demanded an apology from Obama. Within days, the Illinois senator conceded that their concerns over the campaign memo were "entirely justified."

Clinton's courting of Indian-American voters comes as the 2.3 million-member community in the U.S. exerts more influence in the 2008 presidential election.

Although they make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, Indians living in the United States have the highest average income of any racial group, according to the Census Bureau. Their 2005 median household income was nearly $74,000, 59 percent higher than the general population average.

They also have a disproportionate influence in Silicon Valley. Of an estimated 7,300 U.S. tech startups founded by immigrants, 26 percent have Indian founders, CEOs, presidents or head researchers, according to a report by Duke University.

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Associated Press writer Sudhin Thanawala contributed to this report.