Moderation is key — especially for California District 14 candidates Eric Swalwell and Vin Kruttiventi, who will try to seize on the district’s sizable immigrant vote without alienating partisans in their respective parties.
As immigration has become a defining issue of the 2024 election, California’s 14th congressional district stands out as a hub for foreign-born citizens working in the tech industry – nearly 2 in 5 residents are immigrants – while both candidates call for stiffer reforms to quell immigration from across the southern border.
“We can have security and address the workforce crisis in America,” Rep. Swalwell, the Democratic incumbent, said in an email. “Only one party is interested in that. Democrats.”
Swalwell is running for a seventh consecutive term in the House of Representatives, where he’s served on the Homeland Security Committee and the Judiciary Committee, key assignments that give him direct oversight on immigration issues. He embraced the role of heel to the Trump administration’s most restrictive policies, but record levels of illegal migration have forced him to toe the line between hawk and dove.
Kruttiventi, the Republican challenger, is a naturalized citizen born in Hyderabad, India. He moved to the U.S. in 2002 and founded several start-up companies in cloud software. Today, he’s the CEO and president of the global consulting firm A5. Kruttiventi’s idyllic immigrant story is one he believes should be replicated across the nation through immigration reform that secures the southern border and creates a “fair and compassionate” immigration process.
“Many of my friends have had to earn double masters in order to be here. They’ve been paying taxes, they obey the law and are legal citizens,” Kruttiventi said. “For at least people who were born in India and China, the backlog for a green card is over 100 years.”
That backlog is holding back the American economy, Kruttiventi said, which is effectively pushing “unicorn” immigrants to create multi-million dollar businesses in China and India instead of the United States. Attracting them to the United States requires the U.S. to prioritize merit-based immigration which streamlines their citizenship, he said.
A 2024 immigration bill that Swalwell supported would have added dozens of immigration judges to handle backlogs related to green cards, asylum claims and naturalization. He described Republicans who blocked the bill in May as “not serious” on immigration, and lampooned them for promoting a false migrant pet-eating conspiracy while voting against border patrol funding.
“Democrats want order. Republicans want disorder,” Swalwell said. “Democrats have solutions. Republicans only want the politics.”
But Kruttiventi said it’s Democrats who are playing politics. Because the proposed immigration bill contained $60 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine and $20 billion in weapons and defense systems to Israel, Republican opposition was warranted and a more restrictive immigration bill is required, he said.
“Politics were being played,” Krittuventi said, adding that the bill fell short of creating a more strict asylum screening process that would alleviate the burden on Border Patrol officers and the Department of Homeland Security, which dealt with close to half a million asylum claims …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
