[OPINION] Fil-Ams, immigration, and the 2024 US election
Unless you’ve been living under Scarborough Shoal, you might have noticed that 2024 is an election year in the not-so-United States of America.
Unlike the Philippines, where elections are decided by the popular vote, the US Constitution amplifies state’s rights in two key ways.
You might have heard of the Electoral College, where 48 of the 50 states’ electoral votes are awarded winner-takes-all. Whether you win by a million votes or one vote with a butterfly ballot and hanging chads, this system means that in this cycle, only six or seven battleground states’ votes actually matter: some combination of AZ, GA, MI, NV, NC, PA, and WI.
If those state abbreviations don’t mean anything to you, imagine what if the 82 provinces of the Philippines had an electoral college, and the election came down to the vote in 10 provinces that your Fil-Am cousin’s never heard of.
Another way that it matters is because the “advice and consent” of at least 50 (the Vice President breaks 50/50 ties) or sometimes 60 (see the filibuster, not to be confused with El Filibusterismo) senators is needed to approve Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, military officers, and many more key positions in the government.
After you win, you still have to govern, right?
What if Donald Trump wins?
If D. Tiddy manages to win the election again, he’ll no doubt have enjoyed some level of support from Fil-Ams. While none of the top 10 states with Fil-Am populations are really considered battleground states, the margin of error between victory and defeat is smaller than the Fil-Am population of Las Vegas, to give one example of a battleground state where our vote matters. With Fil-Ams split roughly ⅔ Democrats and ⅓ Republicans, small shifts could have great effects.
While there is some slice of true believer Fil-Ams, most of the “smart Republican” Fil-Ams I talk to cite law and order, the economy, lower taxes, and religion as their motivation.
As an immigration lawyer, I’ll hear people complain about the cost of health insurance or how long their immediate relative or family preference petition has been pending, but in the same conversation, say they’ll still vote for Trump.
Those people might not have as much to worry about in the future if Trump wins and the people behind Project 2025 get their way. Buried deep in the proposals, overshadowed by the southern border, is a provision where they want the government to be able to shut down immigration in categories where there are severe backlogs — something that should be familiar to natives of the Philippines (and China, India, and Mexico).
There are no trigger numbers or statistics cited, and this probably won’t happen in real life, but there is a desire to shut down immigration completely if Trump wins. I’m going to guess that US citizens will always be able to sponsor their spouses, minor children, and probably fiancés, but their right to sponsor parents, adult sons and daughters (meaning married or over 21), and siblings might go away. Green card holders that spend a lot of time in the Philippines might want to naturalize to upgrade their situations.
Setting aside unlikely scenarios, such as Congress enacting new legislation, the very real scenario of a 9-0 US Supreme Court pulling us further back in history is a spooky thought for Halloween. One thing I think the Philippines got right was term limits for the Supreme Court. Lifetime appointments give justices too much power, without much accountability for this huge responsibility.
What if Kamala Harris wins?
Since Joe’s withdrawal, it’s interesting how a Kamala Harris presidency feels like it would maintain the status quo. Nobody really talks about how she could be the first woman to become president, and we don’t hear as much about her Asian heritage and how revolutionary it could be.
Rightly or wrongly, a vote for the administration’s anointed is a vote for continuity. As an immigration lawyer, I’ve seen processing times start to speed up a little in 2024, at least for people who are physically in the United States, adjusting or changing status. People with straightforward situations are getting approved fairly smoothly.
Where we see backlogs is for people who are processing through the US embassy in the Philippines. One growing niche is the mandamus lawsuit, where you sue the government agency in federal district court for unreasonable delay or denial of your petition.
To be fair, the government has been taking steps to speed up processing. Recently, the Philippines joined India in having the biometrics portion of the non-immigrant visa application separated at a Visa Application Center. This should hopefully help ease capacity.
One way a Harris administration would differ from a Trump administration would be in actually trying to improve the system of immigration from the Philippines to the US, not trying to break it from within. A big caveat though: with the American public so focused on the southern border, all the billions of dollar that are going there under either new president are funds that won’t really impact Filipinos or Fil-Ams either way.
That being said, the Biden administration has presided over the most deportations in history — more than under Obama and more than under Trump. This goes back to efficiency. Since prosecutors have more leeway to prioritize violent, dangerous, or felonious respondents, and discretion to leave lower priority targets alone, Democratic administrations tend to be more efficient at deportation. Contrast this with the recent Trump administration: if all (estimated) 11 million undocumented people are priorities, then nobody is really a priority and the system just descends into chaos.
What if I was in charge?
A few things on my wishlist that probably won’t happen under either new president:
I wish that people would realize that there’s more to immigration than the southern border. There’s a shortage of healthcare workers everywhere in the world, and the years-long backlog for the EB-3 (employment-based, third preference) category is making Filipino nurses look for greener dollars in other countries. There should be a special category or separate quota for healthcare workers.
Along with hoping for peace in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, I wish that the US would back up the Philippines more against bullies in the region. While I don’t think a sane president would want to provoke a war, I do think that America should look at the words of the 1951 mutual defense treaty, which includes island territories under our jurisdiction.
My final wish, related to the first one, is that the positive side of the bipartisan bill (mainly written by Republicans and killed by Trump for political purposes in February 2024) materializes. This potentially could phase in 250,000 green cards (160,000 family-based, 90,000 employment-based) over the next five years. Since the Philippines (along with China, Mexico, and India) has consistently gotten the maximum 7% “country cap” of the total quota, that’s potentially 17,500 more green cards for people born in the Philippines, which might feel like a drop in the bucket but could change some lives.
A month before the election, we don’t know what’s going to happen. Will the voters choose to continue the current order or do they want to return to chaos, perhaps even more chaos than before? Stay tuned to the finale of Season 2024 of the reality show known as America, as we will soon learn who will be “the leader of the free world” in 2025 and beyond. – Rappler.com
Jath Shao is an American immigration lawyer who helps people get green cards, citizenship, work visas, and otherwise navigate the US immigration system. He also litigates in immigration court and in federal district and appeals courts. Follow @attorneyjath on Tiktok, Threads, and IG, or visit shaolawfirm.com for any immigration questions or suggestions for future pieces.