Obama exhorts AAPI to be more involved and turn their concern into action

White House

President Barack Obama spoke at the APAICS annual gala in Washington D.C. on April 4.

IT WAS A LOVEFEST.

When President Barack Obama began his speech Wednesday at the Asian Pacific American Institute of Congressional Studies (APAICS) gala with: "Being with the Asian American Pacific Islander community is like being with family," he had the audience in the palm of his hand.

And if there was any doubt about the special relationship the President has with Asian/ Americans and Pacific Islanders, he followed with:

"As many of you know, I grew up in Hawaii. (Applause.) I spent time in Indonesia as a young boy. The food, the culture, the spirit of the Asia Pacific region -- that's who I am."

But as he went deeper into his speech and his tone grew more serious  he warned the community he grew up with, that it is time to step up to the plate and become more vocal, more active, more participatory and demonstrate to the rest of the country that the AAPI community is part and parcel of this country's past, present and - most critically - its future. 

"You're part of the lifeblood of this nation. You are our teachers and our faith leaders, our doctors, our caretakers, our artists, our shopkeepers, our police officers and firefighters. 

"You are our soldiers and our sailors, airmen, marines, coast guardsmen, defending our freedom every day. And, increasingly, you are a powerful, visible force in American political life."

After citing a pretty impressive list of accomplishments of his administration for AAPI, he reminded everyone - as if this particular audience needed any reminding - that we are a country immigrants. "We don't simply welcome immigrants, ... we are born of immigrants. It is our oldest tradition; part of what makes us not only exceptional, but what makes us secure and prosperous and free."

Then he pointed out Filipina/American Regina Ledesma, who was in the audience:

"So I want to tell Regina's story, because it's an example of what's at stake here. Regina came to the United States from the Philippines when she was five years old. But when her father, who was an engineer, fell ill, he had to give up his job -- which meant he could no longer secure documentation for his family. So Regina’s mom supported the family by working at a hair salon. Regina grew up as American as anybody else -- she didn’t even know until she was in middle school that she was undocumented. And she didn’t understand until then that she’d be perpetually in danger of being deported from the only country she had ever called home. As a junior in high school, Regina requested relief under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals -- or DACA -- policy that we put in place. And today, she’s a sophomore studying economics at the University of Maryland. Her future is bright, and America is better off because she is here. (Applause.) That's the story of immigrants in this country."

During his speech Obama cited the need for a better representation of AAPI in the political process. "The AAPI community is the fastest-growing minority in America, but it’s still ..." and here he was interrupted with applause ... "well, that's good to cheer about, but it's still significantly underrepresented at the ballot box.  In 2012, just 56 percent of eligible AAPI voters were registered to vote. And fewer than half of those registered actually voted. So if you’re upset with America’s immigration policy, but you’re not voting -- that has to change."

He praised the AAPI community for coming to the support of the spate of hate against Muslims, Sikhs and Arabs.

"Ultimately, our job is not just to fight for our own rights," said Obama, "but to fight for the rights of all people, everywhere," Obama said to applause. 

Rep. Judy Chu handed the microphone to Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the APAICS event.

"To exercise our most precious inheritance -- citizenship. And that means we have to be well-informed, we have to engage with our government, and we have to vote -- not just when it’s time to elect a president, every single election," he exhorted the audience. "School boards matter. County offices matter. State attorneys races matter. State legislative races matter."

Though the night clearly belonged to President Obama, his former Sec. of State, Hillary Clinton, also spoke briefly to the audience at the Washington Hilton after being introduced by Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA). Clinton was the only candidate running for President to accept the APAICS invitation.

You can read President Obama's entire speech here, or watch the video, below.

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For more news about Asian/Americans and Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

AAPI voters help Hillary to victory in Nevada

Hillary Clinton giving her victory speech after she was declared the winner in the Democratic primary.

NEVADA'S caucus staten was a real test of how the candidates are going to woo minority voters, who in that state made up almost 40 percent of the electorate. Asian/American voters approach almost 10 percent of Nevada's registered voters.

In the tight race for the Democratic nomination where every vote could spell the difference between a victory or a loss, both campaigns for Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, placed a heavy emphasis on outreach to Asian/American voters, the fastest growing segment of the population.

RELATED: Asian/Americans hard to find in New Hampshire & Iowa

Sanders' people were aggressive in their outreach to Latinos, the largest group of minority voters. They based their despite early claims of winning over Latinos on exit polls, highly unreliable. The New York Times analysis cast doubt on that claim asserting that Clinton could have won up to 60 percent of that demographic segment.

The Clinton campaign ran this ad in time for Chinese New Year's:

With every vote crucial, there was a heavy emphasis on the AAPI vote. All the campaign workers - even those from Sanders' camp - agreed that the Clinton campaign, with a robust staff in the state for months, has had the most sustained outreach with a series of Asian/American themed events: dinners celebrating a Filipno holiday, Asian/American-themed phone banks and canvasses and making use of ethnic media to reach out to AAPI communities.

RELATED: AAPI voters could be the margin of victory in Nevada

Clinton last month kicked off her national outreach to Asian-Americans with an event in Los Angeles' heavily Asian eastern suburbs with Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan. At a recent caucus training for Asian-American Democrats in Las Vegas, the Clinton campaign's national director of Asian-American and Pacific Islander outreach, Lisa Changaveja, mentioned that Clinton's longtime aide Huma Abedin and campaign finance chairman Dennis Cheng are both Asian/American.

Changaveja argued that the former secretary of state was uniquely positioned to appeal to Asian/Americans. "She's been in Thailand more than I have, and my mother lives in Thailand," Changaveja quipped.

Ameli, the Clinton campaign volunteer, sees Clinton as a natural fit. "Asians are very family-oriented and want everything for their families, and I believe everything Hillary is for, is for our families," she said.

RELATED: Clinton reaches out to AAPI voters

America’s Opportunity Fund (AOF) ran an ad in support of Hillary Clinton for President directed towards the Filipino community, a key voting constituency within the AAPI community and paid phone banking targeting the overall AAPI community at large.

“Filipino/Americans are the largest sub ethnic group of the AAPI community and they’re the fastest growing population in Clark County,” said AOF Executive Director Madalene Mielke. “Hillary recognizes the significance of the AAPI constituency in this “First of the West” primary state.”

After Latinos, Filipno/Americans make up the largest minority group in Clark County, home of Las Vegas and where 70 percent of the state's people live.

"People like to think of us as one monolithic group, but, of course, we're not," said Changadveja, the Clinton campaign's national outreach specialist tot he AAPI communities. "There's so many languages, so many communities, so many cultures, so what we've tried to do is identify leaders in each particular subgroup community to kind of step up and kind of lead the charge."

Ray Buenaventura, a city council member from Daly City, CA was in Las Vegas to help get out the vote. He Tweeted out these images:

One of the problems to reaching out to immigrants is that the state's caucus system is new to them and requires them to be active participants beyond simply casting a ballot behind a curtain.

"From the country we come from, we do not have caucus elections," said Marjie Gonzalez, who is from the Philippines and in charge of Asian outreach for Democrats in Nevada.

"The common attitude is, you know, we'll just wait in November and we'll vote for our candidate in November. But the candidate that you like may not reach November."

Overall, the turnout for the caucus may present a worry for the Democrats. Only 80,000 Democrats voiced their preference compared to 2012 when the presidential elections drew 120,000 Democrats. Of course, this was just a primary and the vote in November is expected to attract more attention and participation. 

RELATED: GOP has a new Southern strategy with immigrants as the new Willie Horton

In the meantime, Republican and Democratic campaign workers will be focusing in registering the eligible voters from Nevada's large immigrant population.

Republicans will hold their on Feb. 23 in Nevada, where frontrunner Donald Trump owns a casino and hotel in Las Vegas.

The Democratic candidates will face off again in South Carolina on Feb. 27 where Clinton holds a sizable lead, especially among African/American voters.

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For more news about Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

AAPI vote could be the margin of victory in Nevada

It is generally conceded that Hillary Clinton has had better outreach to the AAPI electorate. Above, Rep. Judy Chu introduces the candidate to a rally of Asian/American political activists last month. 

EVER WALK into a Nevada casino and notice the number of Asians working there? Waiters, cooks, servers, blackjack and poker dealers, security, maids, change makers, cab drivers - they are everywhere.

Filipinos are now the second largest minority group in Clark County where Las Vegas is located, behind Latinos. There are so many residents from Hawaii that they call the city The Ninth Island.

Asian/Americans comprise 6 percent of the U.S. population, and their numbers have increased 56 percent since 2000. In Nevada, Asian/Americans are 9 percent of the population.

“It’s a fast-growing population, it’s young, people are getting engaged,” said Shu-Yen Wei, who helps with Asian-American outreach for the Democratic National Committee. “That’s why people are interested.”

RELATED: Asian/Americans lean towards Democrats, Sanders

Asian/Americans comprise 6 percent of the U.S. population, and their numbers have increased 56 percent since 2000. In Nevada, AAPI are almost 10 percent of the state's population.

Since the closeness of the Democratic candidates is unexpectedly close, the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are scrambling for every vote. The AAPI vote could determine the outcome of the Feb. 20  Democratic caucus.

“Sanders is much more focused on the Latino community than the AAPI community”, said Emily Persaud, the Nevada state coordinator for the America Action campaign, a non-partisan group which campaigns for immigrants to take citizenship and then become involved in politics.

RELATED: AAPI PAC endorses Clinton

”This week Clinton activists announced a week of campaigning targeted at Asian Americans in Nevada, and the candidate has also received the endorsement of the Asian American political action committee CAPA21.

For many of Nevada's AAPI voters, this may be the first time to participate in a caucus. To help them, a coalition of AAPI organizations is holding a workshop on how the caucuses work. This training will give anyone intending to participate in either the Feb. 23 Republican or Feb. 20 Democratic caucuses hands-on, interactive practice to exercise your voice!

Wednesday, February 17, 2016
6 p.m.-8 p.m.

6330 Spring Mountain Road

Suite A

Las Vegas, NV 89146

RSVP→ bit.ly/nvcaucus

For more news of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, go to AsAm News.

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Asian/Americans are hard to find in New Hampshire, one of the whitest states in the country

NEW HAMPSHIRE voters picked Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump as their preferences for the respective nominees for the Democratic and Republican parties.

There are not a helluva lot of Asian/American voters in New Hampshire. They represent only 2.7% of the electorate, far below the 6% they represent nationally. For that matter, there aren't many African/American, Latino/Americans or anyone of color.  They are all below the national average. In fact, New Hampshire is one of the whitest states in the country. 

Maine tops the nation with 96.9 percent of its population described as Euro/American, while 96.7 percent of Vermont (Bernie Sander's home state) and 96 percent of New Hampshire are descended from Europe, according to the census. All three were at least 98 percent white in the 1990 census.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: For this article "white" and "Euro/American" are interchangeable.)

If voters braved the predicted snow storm, they will be asked to show a form of identification. This is the first election voters have been asked for ID since the law was approved in 2011.

If they don't show an I.D., precinct workers will take a Polaroid picture of the voter to verify that he/she is who he/she says they are. They will be mailed an affidavit which they will sign and mail back to make their vote official - a process that could take as long as a month.

Studies about why some eligible voters fail to vote suggest that the overall inconvenience of voting—especially in states with increased legal barriers—factors heavily into why poorer, disproportionately black and Latino voters often fail to reach the polls.

So the picture-taking won't inconveniece a whole lot of people - just people who don't carry a government-issued I.D. around with them. A drivers' license or a U.S. Passport will do.

A student I.D. will work, too, unbeknownst to a lot of students. It seems the voter I.D. law was aimed at this particular group, who tend to vote liberal (i.e.. Democrat) and not toward racial minorities or immigrants as in other states. 

The new law may have unintended consequences, too, especially among the elderly, many of whom have given up on driving and no longer have drivers' licenses.

However, immigrants will be affected, especially since so many of them work in the service sector jobs. Employers will normally allow workers off for an hour to cast their ballot, but if long lines form because of the more complicated photo-taking process, a long wait could deter citizens from doing their public duty.Iowa was just as white - and just as rural. 

Immigration has not been a big issue in New Hampshire despite attempts by conservative news outlets to stoke anti-immigrant fears.

RELATED: GOP's new Southern strategy

The vast majority of minority voters are clustered around the urban centers. New Hampshire's largest city Manchester has only a population of about 110,000, about the size of an L.A. suburb. The entire state is about 1.3 million people, or about the same number of people living in Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The issues that concern Asian/American voters and other minority voters - equal opportunities in jobs and education, for instance - have not been adequately addressed in these two highly scrutinized states.

Outside of the fear-mongering on the Republican side, a serious discussion of immigration has hardly been addressed by either party's candidates.

The problems that face cities and its residents - building more affordable housing, better transportation alternatives to the automobile, regional planning vs. local control, having good, equal education opportunities in a globally competitive world and down to simply fixing the potholes in our crumbling roadways - have scarcely been mentioned.

Nevertheless, the outcomes of two of the most white and rural states in the country --  because of the media attention they receive -- have a strong influence on the tone and course of the continuing conversation on who deserves to be the next President of the United States -- even though Iowa and New Hampshire don't begin to represent the real diversity of our nation anymore.

Now, Nevada and South Carolina, next on the primary schedules, are a different story. Stay tuned.

For more news about Asian/American &Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

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Hillary Clinton goes after the Asian/American vote

Long-time Clinton supporter Lisa Changadveja

ON THE HEELS of remarks made by Republican candidates that angered many Asian Americans, Hillary Clinton's campaign moved to target the fast-growing Asian/American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.

Clinton's presidential campaign announced last week that Lisa Changadveja will be the AAPI Outreach Director for Hillary for America.

According to the campaign, Changadveja was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, the daughter of Thai immigrants, and has a long history with Clinton campaigns.

Changadveja's appointment comes as the Asian-American vote came into the limelight because of comments made by GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush about Asian "birth tourism" in the controversy over the use of the term "anchor babies."

RELATED: Bush blames Asians for "anchor babies," not Latinos  

Changadveja, 25, has worked on political campaigns since finishing college. She joined Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2007, working on get-out-the-vote efforts in the Nevada Democratic caucus and the Ohio and Indiana Democratic primaries. In 2013, Changadveja served as the AAPI and LGBT Director for Ready for Hillary, an independent super PAC created to help launch Clinton's 2016 presidential run.

The Pew Research Center found that 65 percent of Asian-Americans have identified themselves as Democrats or leaned Democratic as compared to 23 percent who identified as or leaned Republicans. This makes Asian-Americans the second most committed  constituency for Democrats behind African-Americans. 

Changadveja joins a roster of recent AAPI hires to the Clinton campaign, including Vice Chair Huma Abedin, Senior Policy Adviser Maya Harris, Finance Director Dennis Cheng, Surrogate Outreach Coordinator Michelle Kwan, Director of Women's Outreach Mini Timmaraju, Northeast Political Director Lyle Canceko, and Director of Delegate Operations David Huynh.

During this year's Asian Pacific American Heritage Month last May, Hillary Clinton announced the launch of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) for Hillary, a national initiative to organize and mobilize AAPI supporters. Clinton made the announcement at an event to celebrate Asian Pacific American  In conjunction with the launch of AAPIs for Hillary, Congresswoman Doris Matsui announced her endorsement of Hillary Clinton for President and agreed to serve as national campaign co-chair and the national chair of AAPIs for Hillary.

"Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have a huge opportunity to make a difference in this election," said Congresswoman Matsui. "Hillary Clinton has been a consistent champion and friend of the AAPI community. She is ready to be our next president and the AAPI community is ready to support her. I look forward to leading the charge to help make Hillary the candidate of choice for AAPI voters."

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