New American voters make up 10% of the national electorate and are poised to be a decisive force in races up and down the ballot today, including in key battleground states. In Ohio, where some 62,000 immigrants are expected to have been naturalized between 2014 and the end of this year, new immigrant voters could be the difference-maker in the presidential race, The Columbus Dispatch’s Danae King reports. For comparison, in 2016, President Trump won the nearby states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by fewer than 50,000 votes each.

The impact of immigrants stretches all the way down to the Sun Belt. “About 10% of [Georgia’s] population is now foreign born, and the state has the nation’s fastest-growing number of immigrants eligible to vote,” Jenny Jarvie writes for The Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile in California, where roughly one in six registered voters are immigrants, immigration is top of mind for many voters, KQED’s Farida Jhabvala Romero reports. “We are all human beings,” said Henok Welday, an Eritrean immigrant and naturalized citizen living in Oakland. “I would like the chance that I’ve been given here to be given to other people too.”

Welcome to the Election Day issue of Noorani’s Notes. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].


DEFINING ISSUE – The national conversation around immigration has changed dramatically since the 2016 election, with the majority of Americans supportive of immigrants, Jennifer Medina reports for The New York Times. “In the key battleground state of Arizona, for example, the voters most focused on immigration are those who are terrified by the prospect of a second term for Mr. Trump,” Medina writes. Of the shift, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero (D) said, “People here understand that we need people to come from Mexico to fuel our economy. People here understand more and more that this is about a strength, not a threat.” As Medina notes, “In a June Pew Research Center poll, 28 percent of Americans said illegal immigration was a big problem, down from 43 percent last year. That included less than half of Republicans, compared to two-thirds the previous year.”

ASIAN AMERICAN VOTE – The growing Asian American electorate comprises 0ne of the demographics of voters who may have been turned off this election cycle by President Trump’s exclusionary rhetoric and policies. The National Committee of Asian American Republicans, which backed Trump in 2016, announced it is supporting Biden this year, Brooke Seipel reports for The Hill. “The endorsement of Biden over Trump follows a study earlier this year showing that the use of the phrase ‘China virus’ by Trump and some Republican allies led to an increase in anti-Asian discrimination amid the coronavirus pandemic,” Seipel writes.

HOPE – Noyemi and her three-year old son Jarvin — who have now been apart for two years, six months and four days — are among hundreds of parents and children separated by the Trump administration who have gained new hope from Joe Biden’s promise, if elected, to create a task force dedicated to reuniting families, Kevin Sieff writes for The Washington Post. But Noyemi is still wary, opting not to tell her son about a potential path to reunion just yet: “It seems too uncertain, predicated on intricacies of American politics that she doesn’t pretend to understand.” In Texas, Hilda Ramirez and her 14-year-old son Ivan, who immigrated from Guatemala but were denied asylum by the Obama administration, have been living in a church offering sanctuary in Austin for the entirety of Trump’s presidency, NPR’s John Burnett reports. “If I could vote, I would prefer Joe Biden, because though he has deported lots of people, he was never as bad as Donald Trump, who has separated mothers from their children,” Hilda said.

CLEANING UP – Regardless of the election results, reuniting migrant children with their families is just the first step in addressing the tragic consequences of the Trump administration’s first-term immigration policies, Linda Chavez, Director of the Becoming American Initiative, writes in The xxxxxx. “It would be a mistake to think that one election will dramatically change the fraught nature of the immigration battle, especially in the wake of a global pandemic,” she writes. “It is unimaginable that a new administration would go back to putting children in cages, but it is useful to remember that President Obama was derided as “deporter in chief” during his 2012 campaign, and that ICE arrests in the interior of the U.S. were actually higher under Obama than under Trump.” However, Chavez points out that “if the economy is to recover fully, immigration reform will be essential to growth, adding that “[a]n aging U.S. population and falling births among non-Hispanic whites means we will need more immigrants, not fewer, if we are to create and fill enough jobs in the United States just to keep pace with our current standard of living.”

PUBLIC CHARGE – The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois struck down the president’s “public charge” rule on Monday, which would have “expanded the definition of immigrants who are inadmissible to the U.S. because of doubts they could be self-sustaining.” According to the opinion authored by Judge Gary Feinerman, the rule “violates the Administrative Procedure Act, meaning it must be vacated,” report Bernie Pazanowski and Genevieve Douglas for Bloomberg Law. While the Department of Homeland Security argues that this ruling should only apply to Illinois, the court says the ruling is effective immediately nationwide. The Trump administration is “sure to appeal to appeal to the Seventh Circuit and try to get a stay of this decision,” Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School, told Bloomberg.

Thanks for reading,

Ali