Mike Patel, a second-generation Indian immigrant to America, does not support the Republican position banning abortion and opposing gun control. As a scientist and engineer who has spent a large part of his career working for Silicon Valley tech giants, he finds the conservative denial of climate change ludicrous. He does not like Donald Trump – and yet will be voting for the Republican Party candidate in the US presidential elections on November 5.
“I vote for policies over individuals,” said Patel, who, like other subjects interviewed for this article, asked to be identified by a pseudonym. “Obviously, an individual’s personality traits play a role in whom I vote for. But this is not the main consideration.”
Patel isn’t an anomaly in the Indian-American community. The community – estimated to number 5.2 million – have traditionally been strong supporters of the Democratic Party. However a survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released last week showed that Indian-American support for the Democratic Party had declined from 56% in 2020 to 47% now. Like Patel, 32% of the respondents said that they intend to vote for Republican Party’s candidate Trump.
Though California, where Patel lives, is overwhelmingly liberal, he and other Indian-American Trump supporters from the state who Scroll interviewed said that when it comes to economics, foreign policy and immigration, their position is conservative.
Trump’s associates say that if he wins, he will move to end the wars in Ukraine and West Asia. Through his campaign, Trump has promised to reduce the corporate tax rate and impose tariffs on all imports. He also vowed to introduce tighter border controls.
“I see a country buckling under the weight of illegal immigration,” said Patel. “My view is that a profligate welfare society is detrimental to the long-term economic welfare of the country.”
In addition, Patel believes that crime rates in liberally governed cities like San Francisco have given rise to a general feeling of lawlessness. He also expressed support for the Republican philosophy on taxation, which allows individuals to retain more of their earned income and invest it as they deem fit. This, he claimed, will drive economic prosperity for society as a whole.
Mahesh Seth, an Indian-American engineer in Silicon Valley who is a first-generation immigrant, admitted that “no sane person could possibly like Trump as a person”.
Trump, who tends to ramble in his speeches, was convicted in May of falsifying business records as he paid hush money to a porn star. He also faces criminal charges for trying to overturn his defeat in the 2020 elections.
Despite this, Seth too, will vote Trump because the Republican Party’s views on economics and immigration align with his own. He believes he is voting for the “lesser of two evils”.
“The Democrats are emotional spenders while the Republicans are rational spenders, and their economic policies will not only help me but the country as a whole,” he said. Indian-Americans are among the top earning groups in the US so it isn’t surprising that fiscal conservatism is a significant driver of the Indian-American vote in Trump’s favour.
When it comes to immigration, Seth does not believe Trump’s more preposterous claims like the one about newly arrived Haitians in the US eating pet cats and dogs.
However, Seth was alarmed by crime rates in cities like Aurora, Colorado, which Trump described as a “war zone” in which Venezuelan immigrant gangs held sway.
Seth claimed that a friend who lives there no longer visits the city’s downtown because “too many folks transplanted here are up to no good.”
“As a legal immigrant, I know how many hurdles we need to jump over in order to get citizenship,” said Seth, adding that undocumented migrants were taking advantage of a system that does not, in the end, benefit them, but only benefits politicians.
Was he swayed by Kamala Harris’s Indian heritage? “Not at all,” he said. “Voting for her on those grounds would be racist.”
The fact that Indian-Americans are veering to the conservatives in Silicon Valley may reflect a broader disquiet about California’s Democratic administration. The state is staunchly liberal and has long voted for the Democrats but there is a growing sense of dissatisfaction over how the state is being governed, and concerns that the Democrats have leaned too far to the left.
Among those who reflected this sentiment was Ashok Pillai, an Indian-American IT professional from Dublin, a city on the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay Area. Four years ago, Pillai was confused about whether to vote for Trump or Democratic candidate Joe Biden. So when Pillai filled in the advance ballot for himself and his wife, he marked one vote for Biden and one for Trump, effectively neutralising the household vote.
“Both of them were old fellows,” said Pillai. “I didn’t feel that Biden had any proper policy, and Trump was a terrible person.” He explained that he felt a vote for Trump would embolden “racists…in the Bible belt” of the US South.
But this time around, he points to a growing number of Blacks and Indians supporting Trump, which, he said, has resulted in the Republican candidate toning down his racist rhetoric.
Pillai believes that the Democrats are “pro-Islamist, anti-India” and do not support Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister. As a corollary, he claimed that Kamala Harris is “anti-Hindu”. He believes that the Democratic Party has gone too far left, and that there is “too much wokeism in California”.
“High school kids are being told that sex is what you are born with and gender is what you identify with,” he claimed. “Why are they shoving all this down children’s throats?”
While filling out advance ballots for his wife and himself, Pillai marked them both Republican. What does his wife have to say on the matter? “At first she was undecided, but then her friends convinced her to vote for Trump,” he said.
Pillai said that it was unfortunate that Trump is the Republican candidate. “I’m voting for him though I don’t like him, because I support the party.” he said.
Neha Shukla, a former advertising professional from Mumbai who now lives in a city in the San Francisco Bay Area with a large population of Indians, said that this was a very polarising election and that nobody was happy with any of the candidates.
She is a moderate who does not support either Trump or Harris but will vote Democrat because she does not want to vote for a man like Trump. Her husband, meanwhile, will vote Republican. She sees a similar divide among many Indian-American households. This mirrors the gender divide being witnessed in other communities too, with Black and Hispanic men drifting towards Trump.
Scientist Mike Patel’s family is split too. Though he will vote for Trump, his father and the rest of his family will vote Democrat. “My father moved to America in the 1960s following the liberalisation of immigration policies by Democrats like JFK and Lyndon B Johnson, whom he credits for creating a compassionate and inclusive environment in which immigrants like him could thrive,” said Patel.
His parents have remained largely supportive of the Democratic party. “In this election, they see Trump as a dictator who has openly flouted democratic institutions and was in rebellion of the state when he lost the election four years ago. My parents are appalled by his treatment of women and will vote steadfastly against him returning to power,” he said.
Despite this, Patel believes that there are enough checks and balances in the US system to mitigate any risks that may result from Trump’s whimsical personality.
Anahita Mukherji is an award-winning Indian journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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