Trump’s anti-immigrant policy led to defeat

Dear Editor,

Although no formal study was done on the effects of the immigrant votes, it appeared they provided the numbers to vote out Trump in key swing states. Some 75% of minorities or immigrant citizens in America, including Guyanese, voted against Trump. Many live in swing states – they provided the critical votes that took Joe Biden over the top to unseat the incumbent. And they voted in record numbers this year. Had Trump pursued a moderate, humanitarian immigration policy and not taken a hard line against minorities, he could very well have won a second term.

The incumbent received some 25% Guyanese America votes, around the same percentage as other minority ethnic groups. It is a huge amount considering that Trump’s policies were tough against minorities and against family migration. His rhetoric was anti-immigrant. As some immigration lawyers said, if it were up to Trump, many immigrants, including legal ones, would be returned to their home country. But so many immigrants gravitated to the President.

The minorities who voted for Trump, including Guyanese, are disappointed that he lost. Many join Trump, claiming fraud. There was hardly any fraud in the elections. Even Trump’s Republican colleagues said the election was fair. No evidence has been cited to substantiate allegations. Authorities in Republican controlled states said there were no reported incidents of electoral fraud. Biden won fair and square. The voters turned against Trump because of various blunders. He lost the popular vote by some four million.
Since the day after the elections, long before the declaration, I told friends and published articles that Trump lost because of voting trends for Democrats in swing states that normally would go Republican. The fact that contests in safe Republican states was so close meant Democrats made gains and would pick up states. There was a swing factor of 2% to 5% against Trump, comparable to the swing factor against David Granger in Guyana. That essentially sealed Trump’s fate as it did against the coalition.

As I consistently maintained for months prior to the election, Biden would win the Presidency because of the serious errors Donald Trump made during his tenure. Guyanese Trumpites said Trump would win without offering data to back their claim. Polls put Biden ahead. Trumpites said the polls were wrong in 2016. They were wrong in 2016 but were relatively right in 2020 though they were somewhat off.
Trump lost because he made some of the same kind of errors that the APNU+AFC coalition made in Guyana, and it was not surprising that the voters deservedly kicked out both.

Trump and David Granger turned off voters by not adhering to common sense basic policies and for pursuing racist policies. Neither one was prepared to heed good advice (not from me as I was no advisor to them) or was given bad advice. Had they pursued simple commonsensical policies that endeared themselves to swing voters, they would have won. Instead, they alienated the swing voters who turned against them.

Trump promised to drain the swamp of alligators. Instead, he added more alligators into the swamp to eat out the small man. The Coalition brought in many alligators to eat out hourie, congo, hassa, kakabelly, and jumpa shrimps; they cleaned out leaving the country with billions in debt. The policy of both governments was bound to turn off voters and they came out with a vengeance.

Trump ran a racist, anti-immigrant campaign in 2016 and got away with it. He won because he promised to clamp down on corruption and fix the broken immigration system. He failed on both counts. He had hoped the same campaign message would resonate and he would win again with it. But it would not work – you can only cash the same check once. It will bounce a second time if you try to cash it again.

There are many factors that led to Trump’s defeat. I only focused on immigration. America is an immigrant nation. Trump’s policy inflamed many voters, surprisingly not all Guyanese. Trump had the support of Congress to make sweeping immigration reforms. Instead, he focused on deporting all the illegals and shut down the border to legal residents. He took away the rights of undocumented college educated students to work. Hundreds of thousands of Indian professionals (engineers, doctors, and IT experts) waiting for their green cards were put in limbo. He did not show compassion for refugees and asylum seekers. He raised the fee of a professional visa from US$5K to US$50K. He instructed foreign Consulates to reduce visitors’ visas. The immigration policy turned off voters. Every illegal and immigrants in limbo had families who were citizens, many of whom were not interested in voting. They came out to vote out Trump in swing states like Pennsylvania, Colorado, Arizona, Virginia, Nevada, among others.

Had Trump pursued a moderate immigration policy and toned down his anti-minority rhetoric, he may have been able to convince ‘immigrant citizens’ to vote for him and survived the Biden/Harris brigade in the swing states to serve another term.

Yours truly,
Vishnu Bisram