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On Nov 6, 2018, Americans will go to polls to cast their vote for their favorite candidate to represent them in the senate and congress. According to major news outlets, this year’s midterm election is one of the tensest, contested and most invested midterm elections in US history. Each voter’s demography has its own reasoning when they vote for either of the party. For a white male who resides in the rural area and who got a lower education status the idea of Trump proposing an end to birthright citizenship might be appealing. On the contrary for Ethiopians’ who are one of the largest growing African immigrant communities in the US, the issue of birthright citizenship is vital to their existence.
A recent research published by Pew Research ranks Ethiopians’ as the second largest American born African immigrants. According to the report, in 2015 there were 222,000 Ethiopian Americans born from first-generation Ethiopian immigrant families. In 2016 the number grew to 239,000 ranking Ethiopians as the fourth largest black immigrant community in the US. And 31% of these immigrants have a college degree or more which is the same number for the general US population. Understanding these numbers are important to fight back any assumption that immigrants are uneducated and burden to the US.
President Trump statement in ending birthright citizenship is likely to help Democrats in flipping the Congress because immigrant populations including Ethiopian’s will be voting to assure that the president doesn’t have enough Congress support to implement his agenda. Even though it is not yet clear whether the president can pass executive order to ban birthright citizenship scholars believe that having control in the house will help him advance his policy more easily.
You can read more about the power of the president in ending birthright citizenship in the link below.
