I am a naturalized American citizen born & raised in India. When I arrived here as a foreign student, I liked democrats better than republicans. Eventually it dawned on me that democrats were keeping me from moving up through middle class. Every time I received a pay raise, my tax bracket also received a raise! After acquiring citizenship, I have voted republican ever since. So it took over a decade for my transformation. Most people from India have been here for less than 20 years. If many are pro-Obama, it is probably a knee jerk reaction to vote for another minority block person.
As people mature and become prosperous, most will become more conservative. Those Indians who are here just to exploit benefits from government will continue to support democrats. But as a group, Indians are doing very well financially in US so I expect more turning republican and conservative, like myself.
In that respect Indians are not much different than other immigrants. I have to believe FDR was popular among new immigrants. When one is starting out on the bottom rung, it is very easy for one to fall for the rhetoric of democrats that they are for the little guy.
Thanks for posting entropy12. I was worried this was going to be the worst thread ever!
What new immigrants?
Has everyone been led to believe that America is a result of endless, unlimited immigration? Roosevelt did not have an immigration problem in the 1930s and 1940s.
Those immigrant voters of the 1850s and 1900 who were stopped in the 1920s by a change in the law, heading for assimilation that you described, never changed, they never became Republicans, they were never assimilated, they are the democrat base of today.
Nothing changed over the last 150 years, as a group they did not assimilate, they have always remained democrats.
Look at the 2008 election and a 100 year record of the demographics.
I work with several Indians. One in particular has been here a long time. He has owned a business and listens to Rush Limbaugh. We have to be careful when we talk politics so that no one hears us, but he and I have identical views on just about everything.
We live in a town that has a lot of government employees, including a lot of new Indian immigrants. He was telling me just this week about how there are cliques of immigrant Indians in town. A lot of the wives work in IT in the big government departments. Some of them know absolutely NOTHING about programming, but if the department is big enough no one notices and they collect paychecks. They are willing to work a lot cheaper than the going rate, which is why they get hired. If a man gets another immigrant's wife a job, his status in the group is enhanced. If a woman can get a few government jobs, even if she only lasts a few months, she has enhanced her resume.
This came up because we had to fire one such woman this week. She literally knew nothing. She was hired as a programmer, but she couldn't even navigate through the internal web page we use to log our work hours.