I have written in the past (for example, here) that the Republican Party, and not the Democratic party, is the natural home of Hindu immigrants from India and other immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe.
Everywhere you look in Silicon Valley, you see Indian, Chinese, and Eastern European (ICEE) immigrants helping to build the high-tech economy. All are here as legal immigrants and many have become American citizens. The education level, technical and engineering skills, and earning power in these populations is significantly higher than what is found in other ethnic communities. Since these ICEE immigrants mostly work in high-tech companies with well-defined HR procedures, they are not paid in cash under the table, like many illegal aliens are, and therefore pay a disproportionately large amount of taxes. My guess is that they also make much less use of social services than illegal aliens do. As a group, they generally place a very high value on education, so that the school districts where ICEE immigrant families preponderate often have outstanding public schools, with little gang activity. (Think of Mission San Jose High School in Fremont, California, or Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, California, where Asian students make up approximately 85% of students and which are among the best public high schools in California. As a result, property values in the attendance areas of those schools are sky high.) All the software companies I have ever worked for in Silicon Valley have always drawn and continue to draw extensively on this pool of ICEE immigrants and they often form the backbone of software development teams throughout the Valley.
In my opinion, ICEE immigrants are natural constituents of the Republican Party. My experience is that they have conservative family values. They believe that one should get ahead through hard work, not government handouts. They understand the financial mess the US finds itself in and find it repugnant. Their value system is decidedly entrepreneurial and meritocratic. Statements like President Obama's "You didn't build that" are counterintuitive to them.
Having observed firsthand the distinctive characteristics of ICEE immigrants and citizens here in Silicon Valley and having concluded that the natural home for them is the Republican Party, I was very pleased to read Mr Kumar's statements confirming my observations. Of the Hindu Indian-American community in the United States, he writes:
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We as a people, and I as businessman, believe that both material and spiritual human prosperity come from a system in which individuals are free to pursue their dreams and aspirations, where private enterprise creates economic expansion and jobs, and where government involvement in the lives of the citizenry is limited. Human development comes from individuals, families and communities, and not from government, which only spends taxpayers’ money without much regard for its value.
Some four million Hindus reside in the United States. As a group, we have a higher per capita income than any other group. We also have the highest average education levels, the highest proportion of people employed as managers, the highest number of entrepreneurs (one in seven), the largest donations to charity, and are the least dependent on government. Self-sufficiency is a given in our community, and we don’t spend more than we earn. Hindu-Americans pay almost $50 billion per year in taxes, and we expect the government to be as judicious with its income as we are as individuals.
In recognizing the vibrancy of the Indian-American community, we must acknowledge one factor in our success: education. Although there are many problems with the public education system in this country, lack of access for minorities is not one. The access is there. Most Indian- Americans grow up attending urban public schools. Why is it, then, that Indian-Americans succeed in the very schools that others do not?
It is the ethos of our culture. We eagerly take advantage of opportunities when they are presented. To us, this is a civic duty, and we as a people have a responsibility to the nation that has afforded us so many opportunities to better ourselves. This obligation is represented in the Republican Party platform, while the Democratic Party platform focuses on ethnic victimhood.
The Republican Party needs to do much more outreach to the Hindu Indian-American community and to Chinese and Eastern European immigrants, the ICEE communities, in particular, here in Silicon Valley. These groups have the potential to form an important bloc in conservative politics in the United States in the coming years.
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