Kamala Harris: slams Trump's immigration plans in front of AAPI audience

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Sen. Kamala Harris makes immigration one of her issue.

California Senator Kamala Harris told an Asian American audience Thursday (May 16) that Donald Trump's immigration proposals were shortsighted and unAmerican.

In a brief speech hosted by One APIA Nevada, a nonprofit that advocates for Asian and Pacific Islander representation in elected offices, Harris played up her own immigrant heritage and told her audience in a Vietnamese restaurant in Las Vegas' Chinatown, hat they have a chance to make history by voting for her and making her the first Asian American president.

“It's important for us to be included in the conversation. I think that's the most important thing. In the last few election cycles, there have been a lot of communities mentioned but the Asian community seems to be missing from the conversation,” said Duy Nguyen is one APIA Nevada's executive director.

Harris' meetup with the Asian American leadership occurred after Donald Trump unveiled his new immigration proposals and she used the occasion to attack the Trump proposals.

"I found the announcement today to be shortsighted," said Harris, one of the top contenders for the Democratic nomination to run against Donald Trump in 2020.

“We cannot allow people to start parsing and pointing fingers and creating hierarchies among immigrants,” said Harris, daughter of immigrant parents from India and Jamaica.

Trump's announcement allowed her to divert from her usual stump speech and tailor her statements to Asian Americans audience, to whom immigration and family reunification are important issues.

"The beauty of the tradition of our country has been to say, when you walk through the door, you are equal. We spoke those words in 1776, 'we are all equal' and should be treated that way. Not, oh well, if you come from this place, you might only have a certain number of points, and if you come from that place you might have a different number of points."

Asians have historically immigrated as family units, Harris pointed out. "It is usually the sibling connection. There was no mention of that in the policy whatsoever," she said, according to CNN. "It is, and has always been, about family. And that was completely overlooked, and I would suggest, denied, in the way the policy was outlined today."

Those words about immigration and family played well with the AAPI audience, most of whom were first or second generation immigrants.

Trump and others have “perverted” the issue of immigration, Harris added, as she echoed her call for pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented people in the US, including those in the DACA program and Dreamers. She noted how as California attorney general she had alerted county sheriffs that they weren’t required to comply with detainer requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“It has the effect of that domestic violence victim, that rape victim, who I want to be able to run in the street and wave down a patrol officer for help,” Harris said. “She may not do that if she thinks the consequence is that she’ll be deported especially if she has children.”

Margie Gonzales, an immigrant from the Philippines, told CNN that Harris was raising a key issue for her: immigration.

"We in the Philippines, we wait for more than 20 years," Gonzales told CNN, as she talked about the difficulty in bringing family into the U.S.

Reflecting on what Harris' candidacy has meant to her personally, Gonzales said, "It is very important for us because she is an Asian just like me. And so we feel that we are getting this recognition, getting this importance in this election."

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