Washington: Indian American Congressman Ro Khanna called for abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while his Republican challenger Ritesh Tandon pressed for ending country caps on green cards, in a debate between the two Indian American candidates for California’s 17th Congressional District.
The roughly 50-minute online forum Wednesday evening, US time, streamed live on Tandon’s campaign YouTube channel. Khanna took part throughout, answering questions and giving a closing statement.
Khanna opened by thanking Tandon. “I appreciate the civil way he has conducted himself in the past few years. And I think this is absolutely critical to democracy to be able to have a debate of ideas with people who you may not share everything in common,” he said.
On immigration, the sharpest divide of the night, Khanna said: “I would abolish ICE.” He called it “a rogue agency” and said it should be replaced by “an agency like the INS was, which is under the Justice Department, humane, focusing on going after sex traffickers, criminals”.
Khanna also said “we need to be finding pathways of green cards for people who are studying here and starting businesses here and creating companies here”.
Tandon, who came to the US from India, said: “I came here at the age of 28. I followed all the rules and waited my turn.” He said more than 1.2 million people were stuck in the green card backlog, and that “my opponent has been in the Congress for almost 10 years. And the line has only grown longer.”
His plan, he said, was “first of all, end the per-country cap” and recapture unused green cards. He also called for stopping “H-1B visa abuse”, backed voter ID and said illegal border crossing should be a felony.
The per-country cap is a long-running grievance for Indian professionals, who face the longest waits for employment-based green cards.
On taxes, Khanna defended a 5 per cent levy on billionaires. “The question is why is this economy only working for a few billionaires?” he said. “We need a new social contract in America that privileges the working and middle class.”
Tandon attacked the proposal, saying it “taxes the paper wealth, not the income”, and argued that companies and residents were leaving California. Khanna countered that “no one thinks the AI revolution is happening in Austin or Miami. It’s happening in Silicon Valley.”
Tandon also accused Khanna of pulling the party left. “The Democratic socialist America are putting it on the far left, and I’m afraid it is taking America down the road of Venezuela,” he said, adding that Khanna had endorsed a Democratic socialist for Mayor of New York.
In closing, Tandon pointed to the fundraising gap. “I raised only 58,000 and you have $17 million in your account,” he said. He pledged to serve no more than three terms and backed a stock-trading ban covering family trusts.
Khanna said: “Ultimately, we’re all Americans, and we have to come together.”
Khanna won the June top-two primary with about 62 per cent of the vote to Tandon’s roughly 15 per cent. Voters go to the polls November 3.
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