New Citizens — And First-Time Voters — Reflect On The 2016 Election
For months, pollsters and media have sliced and diced the opinions of America’s many voting blocs: African Americans; Latinos; Millenials; soccer moms; baby boomers; white, college-educated men.
Here at Columbia Journalism School, our attention was attracted by a bloc that doesn’t usually turn up as a separate line in the polls: naturalized citizens. They make up about 9 percent of the U.S. adult population, and all of them came here from other countries, so immigration issues tend to have special resonance for them.
We spoke with 15 naturalized citizens in New York City, all of them voting for the first time in a U.S. election. They come from Russia, France, Iraq, Ecuador, Trinidad, China, India, and elsewhere. They told us how elections here compare with politics in their homelands — and what they think of American democracy. Most of them also told us for whom they are voting, and why.
Some are immigration activists, like Sonia Santana from Dominican Republic, and Mayra Aldas from Ecuador, who was undocumented when she first arrived in the U.S.
Others, like young Russians Gleb Vakrushev and Oleg Korneitchouk, have a very different outlook from their immigrant elders, who tend to vote Republican.
Ahmed Al Janaby is probably out of step with many in his immigrant community, too. He’s from Iraq, he supports Donald Trump and says “let’s hope for the best.”
We met some first-time voters who expressed real fear for the future under a Trump presidency — such as Vishal Sarkaria, formerly of India, and Robert Noensie, of Indonesia. Gayle Gatchalian, of the Philippines, rushed to get citizenship to get her “papers in order” — even though she was living here legally on a green card.
Cindy Charles, of Guyana, was anxious, too, in the days before she voted, though her concerns were more mundane: could she fill out her ballot properly?
The tenor of the 2016 election disturbed some we spoke with — there was Andy McMillan of Trinidad, who said some campaign rhetoric was “very confusing” for someone from “a small island” where politics are considerably more polite. Debbie Kross of France was also stunned by some campaign rhetoric, though her three children — all born in the U.S. — tended to view it as a big entertainment show.
Some were just happy to be voting, finally. Achint Chhachhi hadn’t been able to vote in India — the homeland she left 20 years ago — or in the U.S., until this year. Yebin Lee and Marina Zheng are two young first-time voters from China. And Bianca Benitez of Italy will vote for the first time since she came to America in 2002.
“With all the millions of people who live in this country, who live in this world, who are going to be affected by this election, to be someone who’s eligible to vote and to choose not to vote is truly disrespectful,” says Benitez.
