As the Democratic Party pushes to win back a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 6 it's likely to have the support of most Japanese-Americans in an apparent protest against Republican President Donald Trump's hard-line approach to immigration, a recent poll shows.
Asian-American voters on a whole favor Democrats over Republicans by about a two-to-one ratio in both the House and Senate races, with such voters aligning themselves with the Democrats on issues such as health care, racial discrimination, the environment and gun control, the poll shows. But Republicans fare stronger on issues like taxes and national security, as well as jobs and the economy.
David Inoue, a leading advocate of civil rights for Japanese-Americans — whose number totaled 1.4 million in 2015 according to Pew Research Center data — draws parallels between Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric and the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.