South-Asian
Editors See GOP Gaining Ground in Community
By Sandip Roy
Pacific News Service
“Bury
Bush in a Landslide” was the title
of Achal Mehra’s editorial in the
October issue of Little India magazine.
Now the editor of Little India confesses
that all people like him can do is “move
on.”
Though recent polls confirm that Indian-Americans
by and large lean Democratic like Mehra,
Indian Republicans are growing rapidly in
number. In Florida, Indian-American physician
Zach Zachariah recently raised a million
dollars for George W. Bush at a shrimp salad
and steak fund-raiser. Sunil Adam, managing
editor of India West weekly in San Leandro,
attended the fund-raiser. He came away convinced
that many Indians, especially professionals
and entrepreneurs, are “fond of Bush”
because “Republicans have been courting
Indian-Americans and Indians want to be
accepted by the mainstream.”
Most of the Indian publications say that
as far as Indian-Americans were concerned,
the issues facing the president-elect would
have been the same, whether it was Bush
or Kerry. Mehra of Little India lists them:
“The so-called war on terror and racial
profiling and the restrictive visa regime,
which is reflected in major reduction of
foreign students from India and China this
year.”
Ashok Jethanandani, editor of India Currents
monthly in San Jose, says the Indian-American
business community will be looking to see
how the new Bush administration will come
to grips with the H1-B visa issue, which
affects thousands of Indian immigrants especially
in the hi-tech industry. The visa cap had
been lowered to 65,000 last year. “I
hear that the 65,000 quota for the coming
year is already sold out,” says Jethanandani.
“For one whole year people cannot
get H1 visas. That’s a real problem,
and the government has not announced any
plans to change that.”
But the administration’s support for
outsourcing pleases the business community.
Amardeep Gupta, managing editor of Sunnyvale-based
monthly Siliconeer, hopes that “a
more liberal look on outsourcing”
will enhance “the healthy relationship
(USA) shares with India.” He hopes
that though gay marriage, Iraq and security
were the front-burner issues for this election,
the Bush administration will now look closely
“into the economic conditions (in
Silicon Valley) and help the otherwise stagnant
IT (information technology) industry get
a boost.”
…As far as India is concerned, if
Indian-Americans have one message for President
Bush in his second term it is: “be
stern with Pakistan and tell Pakistan that
cross-border terrorism should stop,”
says India Post’s Seth.
The perceived good relations between President
Bush and Pre sident Musharraf ironically
have placed Pakistani-Americans in a curious
bind. “There are people who know President
Bush and President Musharraf enjoy good
relations and think his victory will benefit
Pakistan, but there are other Pakistanis
who think the Patriot Act has had really
bad implications for Pakistanis in America,”
says Akhtar M. Faruqui, editor of Pakistan
Link, based in Southern California.
Faruqui hopes a second Bush term will “redress
the grievances of the immigrant community,
especially the human rights violations that
took place after the induction of the Patriot
Act.”
