Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton sought to woo Asian-American voters Jan. 7 in San Gabriel, California, coinciding with her announcement of the launch of a grassroots outreach for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Clinton in her half-hour speech at the San Gabriel Hilton, said one of her first priorities, if elected, would be to fix the country’s broken immigration system, and reduce the backlogs that keep family members apart.
The idea behind the launch of the initiative is to help build a grassroots-driven volunteer team that will help her engage, energize and organize support in the AAPI community ahead of the caucuses and primaries. And Clinton obviously has realized the power of the AAPI community.
According to a Pew study released last year Asians are slated to outnumber Latinos as the largest immigrant group coming to the U.S. Asian immigrants and their children are projected to make up roughly 88 percent of the country’s population growth over the next half century.
Keeping perhaps the factor of Asian American votes in mind, Clinton talked about her priorities, including immigration. “If you’re a U.S. citizen and your brother lives in India, it will take at least 12 years just to get him a visa,” the former secretary of state was quoted as saying by India West news weekly that reported the event.
Clinton also expressed her support for allowing undocumented immigrants with “deep ties to the community” to remain in the U.S.
She expressed her support for affordable college education, guaranteed equal pay for women and a higher minimum wage and discussed incentives to create success for small businesses. Several hundred people, most of them from the AAPI community and many from the Indian-American community gathered at venue to listen to her address. Among them was Ajay Jain Bhutoria, who has raised $130,000 for Clinton’s campaign coffers, India West reported. Bhutoria gifted Hillary a Lord Ganesh statue at the beginning of the event praying all obstacles on her way to winning the presidency can be removed.
Bhutoria, who serves on Clinton’s National Finance Committee, was also recently appointed to the candidate’s National AAPI Leadership Council, comprising 250 Asian American and Pacific Islander leaders across the country.
“She is one of the only candidates to have AAPI-specific outreach,” Indian American political activist Shekar Narasimhan was quoted as saying by India-West. Narasimhan said he feels as though the Asian and South Asian communities have always been ignored when it comes to votes. “But she actually cares,” Narasimhan, managing partner of Beekman Advisors, and chairman of the new AAPI Victory Fund, which was launched Jan. 14, said.
Without mentioning a name, Clinton denounced the “hateful rhetoric” that has characterized the campaigns of several of her Republican challengers. “They forget a fundamental lesson about our great country. Being an open and tolerant society does not make us vulnerable. It’s at the core of our strength,” Clinton said alluding to the statements by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump who has called for a ban on any Muslim entering the country pending a thorough assessment of the situation.
University of Southern California’s student body president Rini Sampath took the podium before Clinton and expressed her support for the candidate’s anti-racism and women’s empowerment platform.
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