Chinese Americans To Think Twice of the Consequences of an Elected Donald Trump

One of my closest Chinese American friends always asks me a bunch of questions, such as “Is your father an engineer or a doctor?” “At a certain age, do you have to give red envelopes to your elders?” “Did you bring rice to school when you were young?”

The amusing part is that he truly believes that my answers to all his questions would be “yes.” Like my friend, my parents arrived to the United States when they were young, sacrificing everything for us to provide my siblings and me with the best opportunities. Even to this day, my mother still prepares lunch for my father. All Chinese Americans are either immigrants or have immigrant backgrounds with a common tradition.

If Donald Trump is elected president, we will not be safe. He may be discriminating against Mexicans and Muslims, but Chinese Americans will feel the impact of his malicious words and ideas. He wants to significantly reduce the number of H1-B visas issued, but many Asian Americans rely on the H1-B visas to be employed in the U.S. He plans to search schools, workplaces, and homes to arrest and deport 16 million illegal immigrants. And many of these illegal immigrants in the U.S. are hardworking Chinese Americans, including our mothers and fathers, our aunts and uncles, and our friends.

Trump’s main objective is to use prejudice and lies to make us fight each other. He is blaming unemployment of the American people on China. He threatens to start a trade war with China in order to regain these job opportunities. This will cause the situation with Chinese Americans to regress to an era of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1965, or to return to a time when Chinese Americans were treated as second-class citizens and cheap labor for building American railroads. In fact, whether native-born with history of many generations here, or recent immigrants who provide for their families through hard work, Chinese Americans have continually been contributing to the success of America throughout U.S. history.

Be it Trump, his supporters, or the Republican Party, their views do not reflect Chinese American values. We value education, etiquette, and career advancement. However, they continue to demonstrate extreme anti-intellectualism, acting for personal gains without regard to dignity.

Besides ideologies, Trump’s character conflicts with Chinese American values. He is a pathological lair who ignores the facts. He refuses to listen to the opinions of his campaign team, and also refuses to hire people with public policy experience and knowledge, because he is simply unwilling to understand and learn information or the skills that he lacks. He mocked former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for learning and caring for everything related to the administration of this country. As Michelle Obama had reminded us, “our kids are watching.” If the most powerful person in this country sets such a bad example, how will our kids enjoy school and learning?

As Americans, some of us are proud to have the right to vote, but the majority have been avoiding the election. With hard work and providing for family, abstaining from politics seems to have no impact on us. The most important aspects in life are stability, economic prosperity, family, and career advancement.

However, we are at stake at this election. The most important aspects of our lives, including our values, could be stolen by a mistake made under a Trump leadership. Chinese Americans have their own right to vote as citizens of the U.S. Let us step forward to protect our own rights, to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. For more information, please visit (www.chineseamericansforhillary.org)