How Biden can undo the divisions Trump deepened in immigrant communities

CNK Director Paul Ong was recently featured in a NBC News article discussing how the Biden administration can build unity amongst immigrant communities after four years of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies targeting and excluding these communities.

“I implore the Biden administration to live up to its call for unity by precisely not using this trick of dividing us into accepting seats at the table for some and scraps for others,” Thi Bui, a Vietnamese American author and activist told NBC Asian America.

Bui said that for Biden to repair some of the divisions within communities, the administration should begin by devising policies with the lowest income, undocumented, and incarcerated populations in mind.

Ong noted that party identification could play a role in how vulnerable some people are to divisive immigrant rhetoric. Vietnamese refugees, a highly selective anti-communist group who are shaped by their unique position in the Vietnam war, for example, allied themselves most closely with the U.S. and those on the right, Ong said. And thus, for decades, Vietnamese Americans have been most strongly identified with the Republican Party.

“Consequently, many Vietnamese Americans are likely to buy into a simplistic American nationalistic narrative,” he said.

The article also noted that other segments of some Asian American groups, like Indian and Chinese Americans, were similarly vulnerable to the divisive rhetoric due to an incomplete understanding of their own communities.

For more details, access the news article here >>> How Biden can undo the divisions Trump deepened in immigrant communities