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Venture capitalists on either side of the Atlantic have weighed in on a nail-biter race for the White House which has yet to determine whether incumbent President Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden will spend the next four years in the Oval Office.

Biden is narrowing the gap with Trump in key states such as Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Business Insider asked tech investors in the US and Europe to share their gut reactions to the news so far.

Matt Clifford, the cofounder and CEO of the startup accelerator Entrepreneur First, told Business Insider he had been predicting a "big and clear" win for Biden.

Speaking from his home in London, Clifford, who has a master's degree in American politics, said the neck-and-neck race was a "disaster" for pollsters.

"I thought they were treated unfairly in 2016, given a Trump win was within the margin of error. But this is unquestionably a disaster," he said.

No matter who ends up taking the presidency, Clifford said US policy toward high-skilled immigrants would be of great interest to the tech sector.

Last month, Trump announced major changes to the H-1B visa program, which allows high-skilled foreign workers to be employed in the US and was considered an asset that allowed American startups to import talent.

The changes introduce new obstacles for visa holders and are being challenged by major US tech firms in court. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella both once held H-1B visas.

Biden has suggested he would ease the visa restrictions, though potentially not all of them.

Clifford also pointed to the emerging "arms race" between the US and China for dominance of artificial intelligence and quantum-computing technologies.

"Whatever happens, I think Europe is going to be a lot wearier of letting the US take the lead on these issues in the West," he said.

Ophelia Brown, a cofounder and general partner at Blossom Capital, said the election served as a reminder for European entrepreneurs to "keep their foot to the pedal."

She said: "Whichever candidate ends up in the White House, tech companies in Europe have a huge opportunity ahead of them, and should keep their attention on dealing with the opportunities and challenges directly in front of them."

Meanwhile Spencer Lake, a partner at Element Ventures, said the tightening polls offered an "unfortunate commentary on the divisiveness that exists in the US." He added: "Hopefully, the naturally strong business acumen of the American people will continue to prevail, regardless of the outcome."

PitchBook data indicates that venture capitalists donated $69.7 million to the 2020 election with about 80% going to Democratic candidates and organizations.

Investors are keen to see more support for the H-1B program from Biden and vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris, but not everything they bring is viewed as a positive.

Logan Allin, a managing partner at Fin Venture Capital, said he believed the Biden administration would be a strong net positive but predicted an increase in corporate taxes, which would "drag on earnings" and the potential for "higher long-term capital gains," affecting innovation in the sector.

Immigration reform and higher corporate taxes could be a net positive for Europe, however, according to Stephen McIntyre, a founding partner at Frontline, a venture-capital fund that specializes in helping US companies set up in Europe.

"Tighter US immigration controls and COVID-induced remote work have blown open the global market for skilled talent," he told Business Insider. "Silicon Valley is losing its monopoly on tech talent, and we expect to see US startups hire more engineers and executives in Europe, which remains the first destination for US tech companies overseas."

For the latest news on the 2020 US election, follow Business Insider's live coverage here.

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US and European tech investors on US election - Business Insider

Announcing his presidential bid in 2015, Donald Trump complained that Mexico was not sending their best Theyre bringing drugs, theyre bringing crime, theyre rapists.

During the second presidential debate last month, Trump said of immigrants, A murderer would come in, a rapist would come in, a very bad person would come in.

Trumps message about immigrants may not have changed since he first ran for office, but he still retains considerable support among Latino voters. In fact, polls indicate that they represent one of the few groups where his support has increased since 2016.

Exit polls four years ago showed that Trump won 28 percent of the Latino vote. Polls of the current race show his support at least matching that level and often reaching into the 30s. Trump is polling especially well among Hispanics in South Florida and South Texas, which could affect the outcome of those tossup states.

The Hispanic vote will be especially vital this year. Thirty-two million Hispanics are eligible to vote this year, according to the Pew Research Center. This is the first time they have surpassed the number of eligible Black voters.

Joe Biden will capture a large majority of the Hispanic vote, but his margin may well trail Hillary Clintons four years ago. Democrats are nervous about the relatively low level so far of Hispanic turnout and support for their candidate, particularly in Miami.

Biden has made several promises aimed at winning Hispanic support. Hes pledged that introducing immigration reform legislation, legal certainty for Dreamers and extending protected immigration status to Venezuelans will all be Day One priorities. Biden also said hell kick off his administration with a task force charged with finding the parents who were separated from 545 migrant children and deported to Central America.

Trumps border policies have sometimes slipped into brutality. Along with the family separation policy, a whistleblower at the Department of Homeland Security contends that immigrant women have been forced to have hysterectomies.

But a survey this summer from Project Juntos found that a majority of Latinos more than white or Black voters were receptive to messages calling for full funding of police and condemning illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs.

Hispanic support is not as solidly Democratic as among African Americans. Theres long been a significant share of Hispanics who support the GOP. As with other groups of voters, they have found things to like among Trumps policies, even though some may find his rhetoric distasteful.

The administration has given overwhelming attention to Florida and Florida Latinos, said Eduardo Gamarra, a professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University in Miami.

Like Black voters, most Hispanics supported the GOP until the advent of the New Deal during the 1930s. Unlike African Americans, their support of the Democratic Party didnt grow over the decades that followed.

Hundreds of thousands of Hispanics served during World War II, acquiring skills and benefits from the GI Bill that allowed them to increase their incomes and leave barrios, Geraldo Cadava notes in his new book The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, From Nixon to Trump.

Richard Nixons 1950 campaign for the Senate in California reached out directly to Hispanic voters through neighborhood visits and sound trucks blasting ads in Spanish. Nixon was rewarded with 25 percent of the states Mexican American vote. Two years later, many Hispanics were drawn to the presidential candidacy of Dwight Eisenhower, admiring his military record and messages in support of hard work.

The GOPs share of the Hispanic vote increased with the Nixon presidency. Ever since Nixons re-election in 1972, Hispanic Republicans have helped Republican presidential candidates win about a third of the Hispanic vote, wrote Cadava, a historian at Northwestern University.

Ronald Reagan made a widely cited comment that Hispanics were Republicans who just dont know it yet. There was a nexus between the partys stances and the views of many Hispanics on issues such as abortion, school vouchers, military services, same-sex marriage and opposition to welfare and other government programs viewed as handouts.

By the time the GOP became internally divided on immigration policy, Cadava wrote, many Hispanics had become loyal Republicans who did not split with the party over the issue. And, while Hispanic voters have sometimes felt like theyre taken for granted by Democrats, Republicans have consistently worked at outreach to their communities, historically and to the present day.

Its Republicans who tend to frequent megachurches that are attended mostly by Hispanics, Carlos Curbelo, a former GOP congressman from Florida, said during a recent webinar hosted by The New York Times. Some Republican politicians have been very shrewd at building relationships of trust by visiting these churches, all but getting endorsements from these pastors, who are very powerful.

As with other groups counting into the millions, theres no such thing as the Hispanic vote. The largest share of Hispanics are those of Mexican heritage, but Cuban Americans make up the largest portion of the Latino electorate in Florida. Others hail from countries including Colombia, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republican and El Salvador, or the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.

Trump appeals to parts of these various constituencies in different ways. To many Mexicans, Barack Obama is remembered as the deporter-in-chief, since his administration deported some three million people (a policy Biden, his vice president, was slow to distance himself from).

Obama was the president who opened up relations and travel with Cuba. Democrats havent helped themselves with messages praising Cuban education or health care, says Gamarra, the Florida International University professor.

Trumps charges of socialism against Democrats have had a particular resonance among such voters.

Its the message that they are the ones that will stop communism, will stop socialism and put an end to the dictatorships of Venezuela and Nicaragua, Gamarra said. Inadvertently, the collapse of Venezuela has helped the Republican cause here with Hispanics.

Trumps law and order message has also gotten a receptive hearing.

Because a lot of Hispanic immigrants came from countries where they did suffer the consequences of a lack of law and order, they identify with that, Curbelo said. At least when the protests were raging, they did see Donald Trump as someone who could keep them safe.

In prior generations, Hispanic population growth was driven by immigration. Thats no longer the case. Now, the vast majority of growth comes from the native-born.

Second and third generation Hispanics tend to care less about immigration than jobs, health care and education. That may help explain both Trumps continuing appeal and Bidens overall polling lead.

As of late August, Hispanics were three times as likely to be infected with the coronavirus and four times as likely to be hospitalized as non-Hispanic whites. Their death rate was slightly higher. The unemployment rate for Hispanics in September was 10.3 percent, compared to seven percent for Anglos.

The Trump administration may have carefully courted Florida Latinos, both on policy and in terms of appointments, but Gamarra contends that the message has been more effective than the policy.

He notes that Cuban Americans in the Miami area are among the highest per capita consumers of Obamacare. Thats something the Biden campaign itself is well aware of.

On Monday night, they sent Obama to Miami, his second in 10 days. During his previous appearance on Oct. 24, Obama said of Trump, He says hes going to protect preexisting conditions, but Joe and I actually protected them with the Affordable Care Act.

More here:
Why Sizable Numbers of Hispanics Are Sticking With Trump - Governing

Sen. Kamala Harris is officially the first woman, first Black person, and first South Asian American person to be elected vice president of the United States. She and incoming President Joe Biden have won their bid against President Donald Trump and will be sworn in this January.

Harris has made history: No woman has ever served as vice president or president in the US. Her election to the office and the representation she brings is significant for many voters.

Shes the first Black woman to be considered vice president of this country, and it means so much to me, being a Black woman who is a leader, who looks up to people like her, Brittany Oliver, a womens rights activist and communications director who backed Harris during the primary, previously told Vox.

Harriss nomination for this role was groundbreaking. As the new vice president, Harris could play a major role in shaping policies and priorities for a Biden administration, while sending a strong message about whats possible for other women and people of color.

Some progressives have been conflicted about her nomination, however, given her record on criminal justice and positions she took on wrongful convictions and independent investigations of police shootings when she served as attorney general of California.

Harris spent much of her career as a prosecutor before getting elected to the Senate in 2016; she also ran for the presidency before she was named Bidens running mate this summer. During the presidential campaign, she acknowledged the historic nature of her candidacy.

It really does help to have examples of what can be done and role models, things you can point to, to make it clear that its not impossible and that, in fact, its quite probable that you can do these things and will do those things, Harris said in a recent interview with television host Padma Lakshmi.

Harris was named Bidens vice presidential pick in August, and she brings an extensive career in public service to the role. Shes served as Californias junior senator for nearly four years, and sits on the powerful Judiciary and Intelligence committees. During her time in the Senate, shes become known for her pointed questions of Trump administration nominees and officials including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Policies that Harris has led as a senator have included the LIFT Act, which would provide monthly cash payments to many middle-class households, and the Justice in Policing Act, a sweeping police reform bill that would limit the legal protections that law enforcement officers currently have.

As a presidential nominee, Harris took more moderate stances on issues including health care, though she is considered liberal relative to most members of the Senate. One of her first campaign proposals focused on increasing teacher pay, while another sought to bar states from implementing restrictive abortion laws. Shes also been outspoken on immigration reform and proposed executive actions that could establish a path to citizenship for DREAMers, or undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children.

As the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, both of whom were civil rights activists, Harris has said that combating racial disparities has been a central focus of her career. She graduated from Howard University in 1986 and the University of Californias Hastings Law School in 1989, and has focused heavily on what she describes as reforming the criminal justice system from within. Before becoming a senator, Harris served for six years as California attorney general and two terms as San Francisco district attorney.

As Voxs German Lopez has written, her broader prosecutorial record as attorney general and district attorney has been criticized for its contradictions:

She pushed for programs that helped people find jobs instead of putting them in prison, but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended Californias death penalty system in court. She implemented training programs to address police officers racial biases, but also resisted calls to get her office to investigate certain police shootings.

During her presidential campaign, the statement Kamala Is a Cop was used frequently to question her views on criminal justice reform.

Harris has emphasized that she used her time as prosecutor to hold major banks accountable for the mortgage crisis and implement changes including a database to track police use of force, though activists dont think she was willing to go far enough.

There have been prosecutors that refused to seat Black jurors, refused to prosecute lynchings, disproportionately condemned young Black men to death row and looked the other way in the face of police brutality, Harris said at a June 2019 event, Politico reported. It matters who is in those rooms. I knew I had to be in those rooms. We have to be in those rooms even when there arent many like us there.

Harriss nomination highlighted the importance of Black women, and women of color broadly, to the Democratic Party, energizing some voters who were inspired by her candidacy.

Kamala, really. She kicked it into overdrive, especially for what Ive seen in the Black community. A lot of people were already ... like, Eh, yeah, Ill vote for him [Biden], Ill do what I got to do. And then when she was put on the ticket, it was, Im voting, Christopher Walton, chair of the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County, previously told Voxs Sean Collins.

As the countrys new vice president-elect, Harris also dramatically expands the scope of leadership roles that women have held in US government. Weve opened up a space and possibility, Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, previously told Vox.

This year, a record-breaking number of Black, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Native American women have filed to run for the House, according to Rutgers Universitys Center for American Women and Politics. And Harriss success could well spur more women to do so, while increasingly normalizing greater representation in these leadership roles.

Voters are also looking to her and Biden to continue addressing racial and gender disparities in the policies they focus on; Oliver cited Harriss work on maternal mortality legislation as one example of such efforts.

It was back in November that she did a debate and talked about the importance of Black women, says Oliver. She used her platform to uplift Black women. That is exactly what the Democratic Party needs to hear.

Sean Collins contributed reporting.

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Election results: Kamala Harris is elected the first woman vice president - Vox.com

America is a divided nation and the presidential campaign only made the condition worse.

Partisanship has spiked. Armed militias showed up at campaign rallies. Gun sales soared.

In New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and other cities, shop owners nailed plywood over their windows. In a Gallup Poll last month, a record 64% of people said they were afraid of what will happen if their favored candidate doesnt win.

You just dont want to talk to people anymore, Mary Jo Dalrymple, a 56-year-old retiree in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, told me. Youre afraid it will be unpleasant.

This isnt normal not in decades, perhaps not since the Civil War.

Even with nearly a quarter-million deaths, and 100,000 infections a day, our most durable problem isnt the COVID-19 pandemic; a vaccine can solve that. Nor is it the recession; the economy likely will recover once the virus is quelled.

Our biggest challenge is the political polarization that has made the country increasingly ungovernable, no matter who wins.

Polarization has been part of our politics for decades. But under President Donald Trump, it has turned into something worse: delegitimization the practice of condemning your opponents as un-American, undemocratic, and unworthy of respect.

Trump entered politics by questioning President Barack Obamas legitimacy, suggesting falsely that he might not be a U.S. citizen. This year, he charged again without evidence that Democratic nominee Joe Biden was mentally and physically infirm and the puppet of radical socialists who hate our country.

On the other side, plenty of Democrats believe Trump is a would-be authoritarian who would gladly destroy the Constitution.

At their first debate, Biden called Trump one of the most racist presidents weve ever had, overlooking the fact that 12 of the first 18 presidents owned slaves.

Many Democrats and Republicans see the other side not merely as political rivals, but as an existential threat. That creates a dilemma: If you think your opponents dont share a basic commitment to constitutional government, why would you work with them?

That problem wont disappear once the election is over. Unless one party captures both houses of Congress and the White House, it will stand in the way of the next president accomplishing anything.

In my view, heres what needs to happen.

Step One is making sure the election is seen as legitimate. Partisans on both sides think their opponents are trying to cheat a sentiment stoked, of course, by Trumps constant declarations that the voting process is rigged and his refusal to promise a peaceful transition of power if he loses.

A president who wins by underhanded means will rightly appear illegitimate. He may claim a mandate, but he wont have one.

The runner-up needs to acknowledge reality and give a concession speech the more graceful, the better. Thats how the losing side acknowledges that the winner is legitimate. If the losing candidate refuses to do it, other leaders in his party should do it for him.

Step Two is working to bring the country together, as earlier presidents did after divisive campaigns.

That means a serious attempt to revive bipartisan deal making in Congress, starting where the two parties share similar goals another economic relief bill to help the country through the pandemic, for example.

It also requires granting your opponents the presumption of legitimacy, no matter how much you dislike their policies.

Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate, has already said he would try to work with Republicans in Congress if hes elected. Progressive Democrats have sniffed that his nostalgia for a long-ago era of comity is naive.

But Biden knows how the modern Senate operates. He was vice president when Obama tried and failed to win GOP support for an economic stimulus bill in 2009 and for an immigration reform package in 2013.

His talk of bipartisanship may have been a campaign gambit; swing voters like the idea of the two parties working together. It may even be aimed at splitting moderate Republicans from Trump loyalists. Even so, its worth a try.

Its now almost forgotten, but Trump was elected in 2016 in part because he promised, as a businessman, to work with both parties.

In his first year in office, he tried to cut deals with Democrats on immigration reform and infrastructure spending. As recently as last week, he was negotiating with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at arms length, to be sure over a possible stimulus bill.

Even if the results are modest, a bipartisan effort would be an encouraging departure from gridlock. A president who gets things done as opposed to merely insulting his critics could see his legitimacy and his popularity grow.

Its been done before: Ronald Reagan did it in the 1980s; Bill Clinton did it in the 1990s; George W. Bush did it in the early 2000s after a disputed election that was decided in the Supreme Court.

If the next president hopes to leave a substantive legacy, he should follow those presidents, work to stem the tide of polarization that has poisoned our politics, and make Americas government work again.

Continue reading here:
Commentary: Legitimacy for our democracy was on the ballot - Concord Monitor

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expanding a policy to deport immigrants quickly by not allowing them to see an immigration judge.

Previously, the expedited removal policy has been implemented only for immigrants detained within 100 miles of the U.S. borders with Canada or Mexico. Under an expanded policy, immigration agents nationwide have the power to decide if a person is undocumented and has been living in the country less than two years, thus making them eligible for deportation. The move allows for immigrants to be deported without having to appear in immigration court.

Our ability to implement this important statutory tool will further enable us to protect our communities and preserve the integrity of our nations congressionally mandated immigration laws, Tony Pham, the interim ICE director, said on Wednesday announcing the policy change.

Officials said expanding the scope of this policy will keep dangerous criminals from entering communities to potentially reoffend.

But advocates say expanding this policy will not only result in federal agents targeting undocumented immigrants but also visa holders or anyone who cant immediately prove their citizenship or immigration status. And since anyone arrested by agents will be removed without seeing a judge, advocates worry some immigrants could be deported by accident.

People may have to start carrying those documents to, in fact, show that they have been here for two years or documentation that they are citizens, said Fred Tsao, policy director for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. What this policy does is essentially open the door for massive racial profiling, particularly for Latinx and other people of color.

Rey Wences, a community organizer with Organized Communities Against Deportation, has concerns about how this policy will be enforced.

We have seen the way in which immigration enforcement has played out and a lot of these policies end up targeting Black and brown immigrants, said Wences.

Advocates said they are further worried about the implementation of the new policy following news that the Trump Administration cant find the parents of 545 children who were separated from their parents at the border under his no tolerance immigration policy.

Theres been little to no accountability, Wences said.

The expedited removal policy was announced by the Trump administration in 2019 but a federal judge blocked it. In June, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia lifted the preliminary injunction allowing the agency to move forward with the expansion of this policy.

There are several categories of deportations that can be done bypassing the nations overwhelmed immigration court system. The category for expedited removals was created in 1996 as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act.

The administration of former President Barack Obama utilized several categories of deportations that bypassed the immigration court system to deport a record number of immigrants. For example, between 2008 and 2011, more than 25,000 immigrants from the Chicago area of responsibility which covers Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin were deported without having their cases heard in immigration court. These deportations accounted for 57 percent of all deportations during that span, according to a Chicago Reporter investigation.

Mara Ins Zamudio is a reporter for WBEZs Race, Class and Communities desk. Follow her @mizamudio.

Originally posted here:
New Policy Allows Immigrants To Be Deported Without Appearing In Immigration Court - WBEZ