Moderation is key, especially for California’s 14th District candidates Eric Swalwell and Bin Krutibenti. Both men are seeking to capture significant immigrant votes in the district without alienating members of their respective parties.
As immigration becomes a defining issue in the 2024 election, California’s 14th Congressional District stands out as a hub for foreign-born residents working in the technology industry, with nearly two in five residents being immigrants. However, both candidates are calling for tougher reforms to curb immigration. After crossing the southern border.
“We can ensure safety and address America’s workforce crisis,” Democratic incumbent Rep. Swalwell said in an email. “There’s only one party interested in that: the Democrats.”
Mr. Swalwell is running for seven consecutive terms in the House of Representatives and serves on the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees, both of which have important roles with direct oversight of immigration issues. He has embraced his role as a heel for the Trump administration’s toughest policies, but record levels of illegal immigration have forced him to tread carefully between hawks and doves.
Mr. Kurtibenti, the Republican challenger, is a naturalized citizen born in Hyderabad, India. He immigrated to the United States in 2002 and founded several cloud software startups. He currently serves as CEO and President of A5, a global consulting firm. Mr. Curtiventi’s idyllic immigration story, he believes, should be replicated across the United States through immigration reform that secures the southern border and creates a “fair and compassionate” immigration process.
“Many of my friends had to get double masters to come here. They pay taxes, follow the law and are legal citizens,” Curtiventi said. “Getting a green card takes more than 100 years, at least for people born in India and China.”
Curtiventi said this backlog is holding back the U.S. economy, effectively encouraging “unicorn” immigrants to set up multimillion-dollar businesses in China and India instead of in the United States. Ta. To attract them to the U.S., he said, the U.S. needs to prioritize merit-based immigration that streamlines their citizenship.
Swalwell’s 2024 immigration bill would add dozens of immigration judges to handle the backlog of green cards, asylum cases and naturalization cases. He called Republican lawmakers who blocked the bill in May “not serious” on immigration and accused them of promoting a false immigrant pet-eating conspiracy while voting against funding Border Patrol. I scoffed.
“Democrats want order. Republicans want anarchy,” Swalwell said. “Democrats have solutions. Republicans only want politics.”
But Curtibenti said it’s the Democratic Party that runs the politics. He said Republican opposition was understandable because the proposed immigration bill includes $60 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine and $20 billion in weapons and defense systems to Israel, and he said the proposed immigration bill includes more restrictive immigration measures. He said a bill was needed.
“There was some political subterfuge,” Critubenti said, adding that the bill would create a stricter asylum review process that would ease the burden on Border Patrol agents and the Department of Homeland Security, which handles nearly 500,000 asylum applications. He added that it has not yet been established. It will reach an all-time high in 2023.
“People who entered the country illegally are applying for asylum,” Cruttiventi said. “I don’t think most of these people are asylum seekers.”
For Swalwell, asylum seekers are a top priority in responding to both the humanitarian crisis and the bureaucratic hurdles that are holding them back. In the aftermath of the Trump administration’s family separation policy against illegal immigrants in 2019, Swalwell spoke to human rights group Amnesty International about the criminalization of refugees.
“As a nation of immigrants and refugees, we have a special obligation to welcome them,” Swalwell said in a 2019 interview with Amnesty International. “U.S. border officials should not turn away refugees without registering them or even determining whether they are truly seeking refuge. We need to increase funding.”
Both candidates agreed that an overhaul of the immigration system is desperately needed. Curtiventi said the country needs to move beyond party lines to pass “comprehensive immigration reform,” and Swalwell called the U.S. immigration system “fundamentally broken” and “outdated.” He said that.
For Curtibenti, immigration is a fundamental part of his story of pursuing the American Dream, but he worries that recent increases in crime and inflation are causing many legal immigrants to have second thoughts. .
“We came here for the American Dream, for safety and education and overall prosperity,” Curtiventi said. “When crime becomes legal and neighborhoods become unsafe, we (immigrants) start to wonder if this is what we signed up for. Returning home is not an option.”
But after two decades without major immigration reform, could change be on the horizon in the next Congress? Swalwell believes Democrats will be up to the task.
“Democrats want fixes. Republicans want fiction,” Swalwell said. “Democrats wake up every day and work for working people.”
