A Consequential Election
On November 5th American citizens will get the chance to decide their course of history by casting ballots for the 2024 elections. This presidential election has often been described as the “most consequential election” of our lifetimes. In the past few months TV and digital ads have been blasted at us voters at unprecedented levels and campaigning is gaining a fevered pace.
The contrast between what Kamala Harris, the nominee for the Democratic Party, and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, have to offer could not be more stark! Yet, the polls show that the race for the White House is still very close, and it will be a small percentage of “undecided voters” who will ultimately decide the collective fate of America.
Given this scenario, all of us must participate in the electoral process.
Five Reasons To Vote
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) voting is a key element of civic engagement and a critical part of the democratic process. The SPLC gives the following five basic reasons for why all of us must vote:
1) In a democracy, we get a chance to express what is important to us and by casting our ballot we get a chance to hold elected officials accountable for their actions.
2) The policies shaped by elected officials directly affect our lives. While federal elections typically have the largest voter turnouts, voting in your state and local elections is just as important. What happens in your town, city, and state will affect your everyday life.
3) We are all taxpayers and through the voting process, we get to express how our taxes are utilized. Our vote gives power to the people who will spend our tax money.
4) Despite what the Constitution says, rights are not always guaranteed. Voting is one of the many privileges of living in a democratic society. While every American citizen has the right to vote today, we are seeing attacks on voting equity in several parts of America, including gerrymandering, voting restrictions, misinformation, and election intimidation. Voting is a critical right we must protect, and that begins by exercising our right to vote in elections at every level of government.
5) Our votes matter. Voting is the means through which we get to express the diverse points of view on issues that affect our daily lives. Engaging in the process allows us to shape our future.
The Vote Is Precious
U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon, once said, “The vote is precious. It is almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have in a democracy.” Thus, getting to vote is not only a right but also a responsibility. This responsibility makes it imperative that before casting our vote, we educate ourselves regarding what each political party has to offer to us and thus we make an informed decision at the ballot box. For the 2024 election, the Democratic Party laid out its vision for the future in its platform. After skipping to put out a platform in the 2020 election, this year the Republican Party has outlined its future policy goals in their platform. However, most experts agree that the best representation of the Republican Party’s policy goals is contained in the document titled Project 2025.
What is Project 2025?
In the spring of 2024, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, released its policy agenda titled Project 2025, meant to reshape America in line with its future vision for our country. Even though the Heritage Foundation is the main sponsor of this 900+ page document, Project 2025 is a collaborative effort of over 200 authors who belong to various right-wing think tanks, lobbying groups, and Christian organizations.
This document provides a roadmap for consolidating executive powers under the next conservative President, thereby reducing the size of the federal government and fundamentally changing how it works, including modifying the tax system, the enforcement of immigration-related laws and regulations, modifying social welfare programs and energy policy, particularly those designed to address climate change.
Potential Impact
Legal experts warn that if the policies and ideas enshrined in this document are implemented, it would lead the US towards an autocratic state, thereby eroding the rule of law, weakening the concept of separation of powers, blurring the lines between Church and State, and threatening civil liberties. Effectively, among other things, this document aims to put an end to the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare), raise prescription drug prices, eliminate the Department of Education, and end birthright citizenship.
It could end no-fault divorce, give additional tax breaks to corporations and the top 1% of income-earners, implement a ban on abortions (with few or no exceptions), cut social security, cut climate protections, cut Medicare, defund the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, ban gender orientation and gender identity education, greatly limit birth control and access to IVF, eliminate unions and workers’ protections. It would also raise the retirement age, ban gender studies and ethnic studies curricula, ban pornography and imprison those who consume it, and even use the military to break up domestic protests.
According to Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation, the goal of this program is to give more powers to the office of the President of the US (presumably, Donald Trump) and to institutionalize Trumpism.
What Does Project 2025 Mean for Immigrants and Immigration
According to Immigration Impact, the only news site focused entirely on the issues and policies relating to immigration, Project 2025 aims to bring about radically restrictive changes to all forms of immigration to the US. In a panel discussion organized by the Ethnic Media Services, on the 4th of October, Manjusha Kulkarni, the Executive Director of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Equity Alliance explained how the anti-immigrant policies laid out in Project 2025 will impact our communities.
According to Kulkarni, this proposal “gives broad authority to immigration agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to target, arrest, detain and deport immigrants, including Asians.” She added that under the project, “immigration agents could call in the right to enter our private homes, schools, places of business and even houses of worship.”
Under this mandate, federal agents could conduct door-to-door searches (conducted without even any search warrant issued by a judge) to look for undocumented immigrants and arrest people who they merely “suspect” to be undocumented. Under this expanded power, the officers could arrest someone simply based on the color of their skin and without even needing to look at the actual immigration status of the person.
Kulkarni also explained that such extrajudicial powers would have the most impact on millions of families where the parents may be undocumented immigrants, and their children are US citizens. Would the ICE agents then have the authority to separate these children from their parents? Would these children be placed in foster care?
The Specter of Deportation
In his campaign speeches Donald Trump has often talked about “mass deportations of illegal immigrants,” but lately he has even begun floating the idea of deporting legal immigrants (especially in the context of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio) or rescinding the citizenship of naturalized citizens. Furthermore, Project 2025 aims to eliminate family-based immigration, which has been a key tool for thousands of families having the ability to reunite in the US.
In October of 2023, the US government proposed significant changes to the process through which potential immigrants could process a H-1 B visa. The changes, aimed at modernizing the program and combating fraud, include amendments to the selection process, redefining eligibility criteria, and providing greater opportunities for startup founders. Another significant threat to Asian immigration channels is that Project 2025 envisions greatly downsizing the H-1 B visa program.
Given that a sizeable percentage of Indian American immigrants come to the US through the H-1 B channel, this reduction will have a direct impact on our community.
Risk to DACA and Asylum Seekers
Another significant risk posed by Project 2025 pertains to the DACA program. The earlier Trump administration had sought to rescind the DACA program, originally instituted by the Obama administration to give protection against deportation to immigrants who grew up in the United States after being brought here illegally as children. For now, the DACA program’s fate lies in the judicial system’s hands. The state of Texas is leading a group of Republican-dominated states (including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas, and Mississippi). If the next administration is a conservative one, DACA’s sure to be gutted.
According to a recent article in The Nation, Project 2025 doesn’t just propose limiting asylum eligibility for those hoping to find refuge in the US, it goes further by codifying Trump-era barriers to asylum and eliminating certain categories of asylum eligibility (which the Trump administration interpreted narrowly to exclude victims of domestic violence and people targeted by gangs). These retrogressive policies would be disastrous for more than 12 million people with green cards and also the 11 million undocumented immigrants who have made their lives here despite their lack of status and have been productive participants in the American economy and the diverse socio-cultural fabric of this nation.
Cast Your Vote With Care
Though Donald Trump sought to distance himself from Project 2025 overtly, the truth is that most of the authors of this document were either employees of the previous Trump administration or closely associated with it. Also, his running mate J.D. Vance is said to have ties with the Heritage Foundation and is said to be especially close to the organization’s President. Given how the Republican Party has set itself up as an anti-immigration political faction, all immigrants, especially those who have South-Asian roots need to be cognizant of the implications of our choices and cast our votes accordingly.
