Why Indian Americans Should Vote Republican

As predictably as the days grow shorter, the leaves change color and excited children return to school, every four years the fall presidential election season saturates the airwaves with patriotic fervor, well-rehearsed rhetoric, political punditry, and emotional debate over issues of central importance to the lives of all citizens, such as national security, taxes, the economy, and social policy. This year, many Americans justifiably see the stakes as particularly high, with our nation at war and headed by a president whose leadership has polarized the electorate. But apart from the immediate issues that may drive Americans to the polls in record numbers this November 2, this election season provides a much-needed opportunity to reflect upon deeper issues of political philosophy, the immigrant experience, and the implications of this year's stark choice for Indian American voters not just between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry, but between the Republican and Democratic parties.

Before sharing my views on this issue, I should make full disclosure that I am a registered Republican, and have been so since I was first eligible to vote. And even before I could vote, my parents were both registered and active Republicans since the day they became naturalized U.S. citizens. Like many of my first generation peers, I was taught that in America you could study hard, work hard, behave yourself and ultimately achieve success. Unlike the country we left behind, your name, gender, religion or place of birth would not dictate the course of your life and continue you to a narrow stratum of potential achievement. As I grew older and began to face the challenges of life, I feared that things were not quite as simple, but that the Republican Party better reflected my understanding of the American Dream. And the party offers the same promise to all immigrants, though only a minority of them seem to be getting the message.

We are a community of professionals, small-business owners, and high-tech entrepreneurs. Like most immigrants, I work hard for the money I earn and like to keep as much of it as possible and give as little as I can legally justify to the government to squander on bloated bureaucracy and social programs that just don't work. The Republican Party has always been an advocate of lower taxes on all classes of society, smaller government, less regulatory burdens on small businesses and the promise of a rising economic tide that lifts all boats, not a zero-sum game of class warfare such as that advocated by the Democrats.

In his first term, President Bush eliminated the perverse marriage tax penalty, repealed key death tax provisions and doubled the child care tax credit. Thanks to these and other tax Republican policies, seven out of every ten U.S. households – the highest proportion in history – own their own homes. On the business-front, common sense and personal experience tells us that an entrepreneur who pays lower taxes is likely to invest the savings in his business, creating jobs and shareholder value in an efficient manner. This year, one candidate – John Kerry – promises to redistribute hard-earned dollar of the hard working people to welfare recipients and bureaucrats; the other, George Bush, champions an "ownership society" where citizens control their own destinies.

Free trade and its subset, the political bogeyman of outsourcing, is yet another example of a clear choice between the parties which points emphatically in one direction. One candidate, John Kerry, openly derides the trend of American industry, especially in the high tech and services send lower-paying jobs abroad where they can be done more efficiently and cheaply than in the highly regulated U.S. economy, in part to our Byzantine tax code and de facto taxes in the form of unbridled regulation and a runaway litigation system.

Who's the chief beneficiary of those "outsourced" jobs - no, not Indian workers, although they may come in a close second. The big winner in the outsourcing dynamic is the American consumer, who pays less for goods and services that would otherwise cost double or more if, as John Kerr wants, America puts economic barriers at its borders to keep call-center and software development jobs here at home.

Numerous other social and economic "hot button" issues highlight the differences between the parties. Democrats want to impose a nationalized healthcare system on us under the guise of equal access, while Republicans correctly believe that the U.S. healthcare system provides the best care in the world and that the healthcare marketplace would operate even more efficiently if rid of the scourge of runaway malpractice lawsuits such as those that made Kerry's running mate John Edwards a multimillionaire trial lawyer.

Voting Republican makes sense this fall for most Americans, but it is especially so for the Indian American community when we consider some pragmatic facts. For example, under the current Bush administration more Indian Americans have been appointed to prestigious jobs in the highest ranks of the federal government than in any prior administration. This administration has held more high level meetings with top Indian diplomats, has been more proactive on Indian-American foreign policy issues, and has held more joint Indian and American military exercises to strengthen strategic alliances ~between the two countries than any prior administration in history. And as a civil rights lawyer, I can personally attest to the fact that this administration has heard and acted upon the civil rights concerns of religious minorities such as Sikhs and Muslims, protecting their employment rights and their rights to wear religious symbols in public schools.

This historical support by minority communities of the Democratic Party fails to reflect a modern and pragmatic analysis of our community's economic, social and geopolitical interests, and further fails to adjust for the fact that all of these decades of support have failed to pay off during Democratic administrations in any positions of power and influence for Indian Americans. Rather than predictably voting for the Democratic ticket this year, they should take the opportunity to examine what the candidates stand for, and vote for the part that better reflects our interests, values, and dreams.

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