7 Reasons Why Trump Gets So Many Immigrant Votes
I am an Asian American Democrat. Millennial. Second-generation immigrant. College graduate. Twelve years of combat sports put me in touch with many blue-collar Trump supporters, many of them minorities.
This is not a pro-Trump article by any means. I’d die before I’d support Trump. If I criticize the left, it’s because I want us to be better. Not because I’m switching sides.
Reason One: Acceptance and Safety
The most hardcore minority Trump supporter I’ve ever met was an undocumented Mexican. Crossed the border as a kid. If caught, he’s getting deported.
I’ve traveled the world. I understand the thought process. If you want to be accepted by locals, be passionate about the same things they are.
The undocumented Mexican immigrant wants to be American so badly that he feels protected by fanatically supporting Trump.
The second most hardcore minority supporter I know? Second-generation South Asian immigrant. Highly educated. Honors student. Former radical liberal. Physically small and unathletic.
My experience in Ukraine taught me that men who feel masculine deficiency do extreme shit to fill the void. It took me three hours to convince such a man not to volunteer for front-line combat. Less than a year before, he wore makeup and had pink hair. (Not the same guy).
Supporting Trump offers vulnerable men, especially minority men, an easy way to feel masculine—power via association.
“Hey strong white alpha man! Me love you long time! Now protect me :3.”
Reason Two: Feelings of Superiority
Trump is a poor man’s path to sophistication. And human beings naturally want to feel more sophisticated than their peers.
Successful immigrants especially want to set themselves apart from those “fresh off the boat”.
Years ago, on a trip my family took to San Francisco, an older Chinese woman approached my father to hand him a flier, asking in Mandarin: “New arrivals from China?”
“What are you talking about?!” My father snapped angrily in English before storming off.
From my understanding, things are similar with second and third generation Latino immigrants. They want to differentiate themselves from both their parents and new arrivals.
Young Hispanic-American men are especially motivated to support Trump. It’s a chance to demonstrate that they are both sophisticated and tough, a long-held value within their heritage.
“I don’t care what Trump says about us. They are just words. I support him anyway because I don’t want to be a sensitive liberal.”
Reason Three: Shared Traditional Values
Put yourselves in the shoes of an Asian or Muslim first-generation parent. In your home country, drug possession carries a death sentence. You’ve been conditioned to fear and hate it with extreme prejudice.
One day, after beating your child within an inch of their life, they reveal that Tommy was the kid who gave them the weed you found.
You call Tommy’s liberal parents, expecting them to prostrate themselves before you with tearful apologies and offers to honor-kill their child, which you will graciously reject.
Instead, they call CPS on you. But not before screaming at you for assuming Tommy’s pronoun. You laugh at this silly prank until…knock knock…
“Child Protection…what?! What dis American bullshit?”
Now, you are terrified of America. Terrified of white people and their bizarre rules.
Until one day, while shopping, you chance upon a white person in a MAGA hat spanking their child.
And it’s like falling in love all over again.
Reason Four: Cultural Policing
In high school, I had this Jimi Hendrix t-shirt that I wore to school. A liberal kid came up to me all excited and asked me what my favorite Jimi Hendrix song was.
I told him I didn’t know. I bought the shirt because the guy was also named Jimmy. He was rude to me for the rest of the year.
This was before wokeness. Wokeness took that stifling cultural elitism and split its fucking atom into an ever-suffocating, ever-pervading mushroom cloud of draconian witch hunts.
I’ve been a loyal minority liberal for years, and not once has a white progressive come up to me and ask, “How are we doing? Are we on the right track?”
Instead, I have had white progressives go nuclear on me for the pettiest disagreements.
For a group who claims to love us so much, they never bothered to truly understand us.
You know why I bought that Jimi Hendrix shirt without listening to his songs? Because I was so busy trying to balance two fucking worlds that I didn’t have time for your petty cultural rules. Something Jimi Hendrix would have ironically understood.
Reason Five: Racism Isn’t as (Overtly) Bad As It Use To Be
The left is a victim of its own success, eradicating overt racism in near totality. Yes, I know racism is still a big problem. But it’s a lot less frequent and a lot less public.
Last time I heard a racial slur in person? 2015…in Southern Turkey.
Today, I can walk down any Western city or university and spot Asian men holding hands with blond bombshells. In 2010, you’d have a better chance of spotting your favorite movie stars.
Unheard of? No. But you had to be beyond exceptional. You had to be the most popular Asian guy in your school.
The left (and K-Pop) made this possible. And I will always be grateful even though I was born ten years too early. But not many people have my incredibly long memory.
And as painful memories of past racism fade, so too does gratitude for the left. And as that gratitude fades, so too does tolerance for the left’s miscalculations.
Reason Six: Underestimating Republican Warmth
It doesn’t matter how much college-educated liberals love immigrants. At the end of the day, an immigrant construction worker is going to have a lot more in common with a white construction worker.
If you can’t make white construction workers love you, the Mexican workers won’t love you back either. They spend more time together than you ever will.
They work together. Eat together. Drink together. Game together. Lift together.
You want to tell that Mexican worker that all Trump voters are racist? They just invited him over for a BBQ last week. Now he thinks you’re crying wolf.
Once that happens, it’s over. He belongs to Trump.
Reason Seven: The Left is “Cowardly”
First, I do not believe Donald Trump deserves to be a symbol of masculinity. Nor do I accept the right’s propaganda that liberals are weak.
Jon Jones, literally the greatest human fighter to ever walk the Earth, votes democrat. Jordan Burroughs, one of the greatest American wrestlers of all time, votes democrat and hates Trump. Kobe Bryant voted democrat and hated Trump.
No. The left is not “cowardly” because it lacks traditional toughness.
The left is “cowardly” because when it mattered the most, it abandoned its principles.
Women. Life. Freedom. The silence on the left was deafening when Iranian women rose up against the brutal, misogynistic Iranian regime in 2022.
To add insult to injury, Iranian-American women had been loyal liberals for decades. Voted Democrat. Marched for George Floyd. Sided with the left for every issue. Until we betrayed them in 2022.
I want to be angry at all Trump supporters. I really do. How could anyone betray America by falling for that tub of lard grifter? But I can’t. Thousands of Iranian-Americans now swell his ranks. Former loyal Democrats.
I can forgive the left for everything else—every other annoyance, shortcoming, and failing. I can even forgive how lonely the left made me feel by ostracizing masculine men.
But I cannot accept this betrayal of Iranian American women.
