Fremont Anjali
 | |
| Era | The 2000s |
|---|---|
| Age | 30-40 |
| Home | Fremont, CA |
| Demographic | Indian-American, technology, professional |
| Lean | Lean Democrat |
| Race | asian |
| Predecessor | Daly City Marilou |
| Successor | Bay Area Priya |
Anjali is an Indian-born software engineer in the East Bay suburbs, part of the skilled immigrants who arrived on H-1B visas in the 2000s. She votes Democratic on science, schools and civil liberties, and breaks with her party on trade and her daughter's university admissions.
Who they stand for
America's Indian-born population roughly doubled during the 2000s through the H-1B visa programme, and most arrivals worked in engineering, making Fremont one of its centres. Per-country green-card caps stretched the wait for Indian nationals past a decade, so families bought houses on temporary visas. Asian-American voters moved toward the Democratic Party that decade, giving Obama nearly two-thirds of their votes in 2008, mainly on immigration, science and opposition to the religious right, not income. Two things pulled her toward the Republicans. The first was the 2004 outsourcing panic, led by Lou Dobbs and John Kerry's phrase "Benedict Arnold CEOs," which treated her industry as a threat to American jobs. The second was affirmative action in university admissions, which she believes limits her daughter's chances. The killing of Balbir Singh Sodhi in Mesa, Arizona, four days after the September 11 attacks, shot after his turban led an attacker to mistake him for an Arab, made racial profiling feel real to her.
In her lineage, she comes between a Catholic union nurse and a socialist coder. By her generation the church and the union are gone, left politics have not arrived, and the worry over admissions is what the next persona inherits.
Playing to them
Anjali responds well to a president who treats her as an asset, offering a higher cap on H-1B visas, a faster path to a green card, funding for science, good public schools, and a close alliance with India, which President Bush's nuclear agreement with India showed a Republican could deliver. Surveillance and airport profiling matter more to her than to most liberal voters, because these policies fall on her own household. She will not forgive a president who plays to fears about outsourcing, allows creationism in a public school, or lets racial profiling stand as policy. She also breaks with her own side, without leaving it, over racial preferences in university admissions.
Winning Anjali's support costs the cast's economic nationalists, such as Janesville Gary, Chattanooga Travis and Flathead Wade, on trade and visas, and Fox News Phyllis on immigration. Her position on admissions costs Greensboro Jasmine, Sister Loretta and Protest Paige. Startup Seth wants the same immigration and trade policy and disagrees with her only on taxes and health care, so only a president silent on both issues can hold on to both of them.
Where they live
The five states where Fremont Anjali makes up the largest share of the electorate in the 2000s:
- Hawaii
- California
- Nevada
- New Jersey
- Washington
Lineage
Daly City Marilou → Fremont Anjali → Bay Area Priya
Immigrant professional women in the Bay Area, Democrats in all three decades and further left in each. Marilou is a Catholic nurse: for the union and health spending, against abortion. Anjali is a non-religious engineer: for skilled immigration and science funding, against affirmative action because it threatens her daughter's admissions. Priya is the daughter's generation: a software engineer who supports the Green New Deal and Bernie Sanders. Each is further left because her workplace is further left, and the religion is gone by the third. Priya got into a good university and never thinks about how, so Anjali's admissions concern is invisible to her.