Off-year elections never get so much attention and often are virtually ignored by a majority of voters. In fact, this year only 40% of Americans have a general election. In places with statewide elections like New Jersey — the first general election since the 2016 presidential election — however, campaigns are becoming increasingly spirited as Election Day nears. In addition to the occasional personal attacks and negative ads, New Jersey voters this year saw a common thread running through multiple campaign materials throughout the state: a racist rhetoric against immigrants and ethnic minorities.

On November 1st, hardly a week before Election Day, voters in Edison woke up to election fliers that read “Make Edison Great Again.” The images, which made a popular round on the social media by now, read “DEPORT” over two Board of Education candidates, one of Chinese descent and the other Indian descent. The flyer goes on to say that “the Chinese and Indians are taking over our town! …Enough is Enough!” and describes them as “the outsiders.”

Condemned by mayoral campaigns of both parties, it’s distasteful, disrespectful, and wrong. It’s incredibly awful campaign tactics, it’s illegal (NJ Election Law requires all political communications to be labeled with an identification statement.), and it’s racist. More importantly, this mailer is the archetype of a wrong notion growing more and more pervasive today: perpetual foreigner syndrome.

Perpetual foreigner syndrome is the idea that those of color, and especially those with a “foreign” name or those who can speak another language, are simply not American, regardless of where they were born or how long their families have been here. It is the idea that assigns people into only one category or the other and divides our country in the false dichotomy of us versus them.

Ms. Falguni Patel, one of the candidates whose photo was used in the mailer, in fact was born and raised here in New Jersey. Yet, the flyer paints the Asian Americans with one broad stroke as foreigners and calls for their deportation. Ms. Patel’s response: “Where are you going to deport me to?”

Perpetual foreigner syndrome has been the core message several other campaign literatures were built on these few weeks. One flyer implied that a Sikh mayoral candidate in Hoboken is a terrorist and another in Somerset County described a Latino candidate a threat to the county’s “special quality of life,” all in hopes of stoking fear, bigotry, and hatred against immigrant communities.

Unfortunately, such an idea has also become more pronounced outside of political campaigns that have immediate advantages to claim in promoting the bigotry. Just a few weeks ago, a teacher at Cliffside Park High School (just blocks away from where I lived in high school) told her class to “speak American,” because our troops “are not fighting for your right to speak Spanish…They are fighting for your right to speak American.” (Side note: the teacher has returned to her job just after two weeks’ leave. Over 40% of the student body at CPHS are Hispanic.)

Again, the presumption behind her remarks is that any language other than English is not American. As an immigrant, I find this hurtful. And as an Asian American, I find it frightening.

Throughout our history, the nativist perception has led to unforgettable, deeply painful incidents, such as the death of Vincent Chin, an automobile worker beaten to death by two angry white laborers yelling “it’s because of you motherfuckers that we are out of jobs.” Or, just earlier this year, the death of Srinivas Kuchibotla an Indian immigrant who, along with his co-worker, was shot after being called a “terrorist” and “get out of my country.”

How am I to feel safe speaking Korean with my family in the public, let alone looking (hell, being) Asian? And inevitably, I have to wonder: how long do we have to have been here to be accepted as American?

Like many other ethnic minorities and immigrants, Asian Americans have been subject to racist attacks of varying degrees. (Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Internment of Japanese Americans, Watter’s World segment in 2016, “where are you from?…I can go on for hours.) Perhaps because of the over-exposure, we have come to almost accept such attacks and rhetoric today — especially those who live alongside so many Asian Americans in Bergen County and Edison. But let us not normalize the racism and divisive rhetoric.

Let our voice be heard in such critical issues. Racism is not limited to one political party or candidate, and neither is civic engagement. This Election Day, let us all exercise our voting rights as American citizens in a show of solidarity. Whoever the perpetrators of the racist campaign literatures this year, let us show them that we will not be intimidated by the bigotry or vitriol — that we as a community and as a country will not accept the hatred.

In the wake of the so-called “Muslim Bans,” many immigrants have adopted the title of an iconic poem by Langston Hughes as their rallying cry: “I, too, sing America.” If we truly do sing America, serving civic duties as voting comes as a natural first step. Not just once every four years, but at every opportunity, consistently and repeatedly.

In the words of former president George W. Bush, “our identity as a nation — unlike many other nations — is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood.This means that people of every race, religion, and ethnicity can be fully and equally American.”

Edit: I found yet another example of campaign literature stoking “racial divides and fears.” This one is in the race for Nassau County Executive. According to Professor Mitchell S. McKinney of the University of Missouri, “the mailer…is a classic fear appeal and the framing of the enemy to fear is certainly based on race.” The New York Times described it “Willie Horton, Updated for the Trump Era.”