As I a first-time voter and the product of immigrants, I want to share why this year I am voting for Joe Biden. The first reason that comes to mind is because of Joe Biden’s commitment to preserving DACA and other structures that broaden access to legal immigration and offer more paths to citizenship. The second is Biden’s stance on “public charge rules.” Public charge is the policy that allows immigration enforcement to determine whether or not an immigrant is “productive” to the U.S. economy, among other things. Previously, the public charge was enforced by quantitative metrics like income, medical bills, criminal (violent and nonviolent) offenses, etc. – albeit problematic, this enforcement was uniformly applied. Trump, however, expanded public charge to now include ‘reasonable doubt’ in which judges can apply looser, qualitative metrics (opening the gates to racial profiling and massive bias issues). Biden wants to change this so the public charge is reverted to pre-Trump era levels. Finally, as products of recent immigration, a vote for Biden is necessary. There seems to be a Stockholm syndrome-Esque tendency within some immigrant communities that follows a logic along the lines of, “we worked excruciatingly hard to immigrate here and naturalize, others must endure the same.” However, there is a certain privilege in our position as Indian Americans – a group whose immigration is very much valued by the U.S. for its economic implications – and voting for Biden now (and more progressive politicians later) is a way for us to open more doors to others who seek the same opportunities we (or our parents) sought after when immigrating ourselves. There are obviously countless reasons to vote against Trump (and for Biden!), however, for me, the strongest plea at the moment is the moral obligation we, as Indian Americans, must fulfill.

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