Biden calling allies Japan and India ‘xenophobic’ shows immigration is key to US elections

Semafor Signals

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Insights from The Spectator, the Associated Press, Hindustan Times, and The New York Times

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US President Joe Biden referred to Japan and India as “xenophobic” during comments at a campaign event, grouping the two US allies with China and Russia, in remarks that underline the centrality of immigration in this year’s American presidential election.

“Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants,” Biden said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said his remarks were a “broad comment”intended to emphasize that the US is a nation of immigrants.

SIGNALS

Japan welcoming more immigrants but far fewer than other G7 nations

Sources:  The Spectator, Bloomberg, The Associated Press

Biden’s remarks come just three weeks after Washington hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House for a state dinner. “The swiftness of the change of tone is still surprising in its sheer, brazen rudeness,” Philip Patrick, a Japan-based freelance journalist, wrote in The Spectator. The Japanese economy is in a downturn, but that slump isn’t related to immigration, he argued, pointing to how Japan — long known for its resistance to immigration — has recently updated its immigration rules. Responding to its aging population and labor shortages Japan has been opening up to foreign workers. But even with new reforms its immigrant population is still only around 2%, the lowest among the Group of Seven advanced economies, noted Bloomberg.

Immigration could determine US election results

Sources:  Brookings Institution, The New York Times

Immigration is a key theme in this year’s US general election, with a Brookings Institution fellow writing that it “could determine the next president.” Biden has been “trying to find a politically palatable balance on immigration as he seeks a second term” wrote The New York Times’ White House correspondent Michael D. Shear. While responding to the historic rise in migration on the US-Mexico border, Biden is also taking pains to differentiate himself from former US President Donald Trump’s assault on immigration by “trying to assert the moral high ground on the country’s treatment of migrants,” Shear said.

India’s ruling party also putting election center stage

Sources:  The Hindustan Times, BBC

Immigration is top of the agenda in other countries’ elections this year too. In “rally after rally” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has brought up his party’s “no-nonsense” approach to immigration, noted The Hindustan Times. “This debate has cast an all-too-real shadow,” it notes, in places where the minority Muslim population is facing a crackdown over citizenship. Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist government recently approved a controversial law that will give citizenship to religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan — but the legislation specifically excludes Muslim immigrants. The text is “couched in the language of refuge and seemingly directed at foreigners, but its main purpose is the delegitimisation of Muslims’ citizenship,” historian Mukul Kesavan told the BBC in March.