It might therefore seem surprising that some immigrants in the US, particularly those from a country mired in a bloody civil war like Myanmar, where many are seeking to flee, would support a vociferously anti-immigrant candidate like Trump.
But a particularly outspoken portion of the Myanmar-American community has done just that. Community observers say that large numbers of them support Trump, mainly due to a demographic profile, driven largely by refugee resettlement, that matches many supporters of the president: socially conservative and Evangelical Christian, and economically and educationally disadvantaged.
Almost immediately after taking office in January, Trump instituted policies to back up his vow to crack down on immigration, with a number of Myanmar nationals caught in the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement dragnet.
The administration also instituted drastic cuts to international aid that have undermined a raft of programmes that benefited Myanmar in a range of sectors. These include healthcare, humanitarian aid for refugees, support for independent media, non-lethal aid for opposition groups and disaster relief.
As Frontier reported in January, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that international donors had met only 36pc of the required US$995 million for Myanmar’s 2024 plan. Of the funding received, the US had provided the largest share at 32pc, or $114 million. With the Trump freeze on aid, this amount has dramatically decreased, with a devastating effect on internationally funded programmes in Myanmar.
Despite these cuts, love for Trump among the Myanmar-Americans who voted for him appears to remain strong. Even the latest blows to Myanmar-US relations, including a near-total travel ban on immigrants and non-immigrants from Myanmar to the US, enacted by a Presidential Action on June 4, seem not to have significantly dented this support.
The administration justified the travel ban with statistics from the Department of Homeland Security showing that migrants from Myanmar had an overstay rate of 27.07 percent on non-immigrant business and tourist visas, as well as an overstay rate of 42.17pc on non-immigrant student and exchange programme visas. “Additionally, Burma has historically not cooperated with the United States to accept back their removable nationals,” the Presidential Action read.
On top of that, Trump sent a letter to “commander and chief” Min Aung Hlaing on July 7 threatening a 40pc tariff on Myanmar exports to the US starting August 1. The implied recognition of the senior general’s leadership seemed to anger Myanmar people more than the excessive tariff rate.
‘My support hasn’t changed’
It’s doubtful that the Myanmar-American vote had much of an impact on the outcome of the 2024 election. According to 2023 census data, 220,000 US residents identified as “Burmese alone”. This number includes non-citizens not eligible to vote in federal elections, as well as those who are not of voting age.
Among those who had the right to vote, it’s unclear how many registered, and what percentage of those actually cast ballots. (Overall, only 65pc of eligible US citizens voted in the 2024 presidential election.) However, there are no known official polls of voting behaviour by Myanmar-Americans.
Among the Myanmar-Americans who did vote for Trump is James Myat, 48, a Bamar Buddhist from Yangon who now lives and works as an auto technician in Modesto, California. He told Frontier that he “might not agree” with all of Trump’s positions, “but he puts his country first, if he thinks other countries will endanger it”.
He said he wasn’t so disappointed by the aid freeze, since Myanmar people “didn’t get any of the money, it only went to NGOs”. He added that the money from the US Agency for International Development – one of the main casualties of Trump’s cuts – “never reached the ground”.
Myat said he doesn’t blame Trump for any of the negative changes in US policy towards Myanmar – although he admits they do make his advocacy work more difficult.
In addition to advocating for the anti-junta opposition with the US Congress, Myat says he drives about 145 kilometres each way every Saturday to protest on the steps of San Francisco City Hall holding a “Free Burma” banner with about 30 others.
For the negative changes, he blames many factors beyond Trump’s control: a lack of accurate information among politicians in Washington, DC about Myanmar, the malign influence of lobbyists connected to the military regime, corrupt NGOs, and irresponsible Myanmar students who take advantage of the US visa system.
“My support hasn’t changed,” he said, hopeful that improved information and advocacy might help the administration make better decisions about Myanmar. “Maybe in the future, he might consider helping us.”
The makeup of Myanmar-America
Support for Trump among Myanmar-Americans is tied to the ethnic, religious and socioeconomic makeup of the community.
A Pew Research Center study based on the 2023 US Census found that Myanmar-Americans are generally less educated and poorer than the overall population of Asian-Americans – qualities that correlate nationally with voting for Trump.
While 23pc of Myanmar-Americans aged 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher, the number is 56pc for Asian-Americans generally and 38pc for all Americans. In terms of language, 43pc of Myanmar aged five years and older speak English proficiently compared to 74pc of all Asian-Americans.
Some 21pc of Myanmar-Americans live below the official US poverty line, while the number is 10pc for Asian-Americans and 11pc for Americans as a whole. The median annual personal earnings of Myanmar aged 16 and older was $33,800 compared to $52,400 for Asian-Americans and $50,310 for the general population.
While ethnic Bamar make up about 70pc of the population of Myanmar, they make up only 2pc of the Myanmar-American population, according to a review of US State Department immigration records conducted in 2022 by the Burmese-American Community Institute.
The review by the BACI – an NGO based in Indianapolis, Indiana – determined that the largest Myanmar ethnic communities in the US were the Karen (75,218), Chin (63,578) and Karenni (13,509), all of which are represented by large Christian populations who mainly settled in the country as refugees. The institute’s annual survey of Myanmar-American communities put the number of Myanmar nationally at 322,173.
The biggest Myanmar community in the US resides in Indianapolis, attracting many refugees, especially from Chin State. Of the estimated 35,000 Myanmar in Indianapolis, according to BACI, some 30,000 are Chin, a community known for its devout Christian faith.
Van Ceu Uk, former president of the Chin Community of Indiana community services organisation, said Trump’s support remains solid among a significant proportion of Myanmar-American voters because he supports Christian values. “I do not regret my vote,” he said in a telephone interview from Indianapolis. “But I did not expect the suspension of the aid.” At the same time, when Trump cut off $45 million in scholarships for Myanmar students in January, it made him “very sad”.
But, he said, “I didn’t vote for him to continue aid for Burma, I voted for him because of Christianity.”
None of the dozen or so Myanmar-American Christians Frontier spoke to believe that Trump practices good Christian values in his personal life. Rather, they accept that he is a flawed secular politician, but support him for what they see as his commitment to fighting for Christianity at home and abroad.
Pastor King, a Zomi from Chin who leads an independent Pentecostal church in Portland, Oregon, said that when Trump moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, “it was like the Bible came to life”.
Pastor King seems truly excited about Trump. Even in the ancient biblical times, he said, “They didn’t get to see [the prophecies come true] with their own eyes. But we are now seeing it unfold in front of us, with our very own eyes.”
“The Bible is coming to be fulfilled” thanks to Trump, he said, referring to the central role that many Evangelical Christians believe a Jewish-controlled Jerusalem will play in the “end times”, or Armageddon.
Pastor King also evoked the conservative bugbear of so-called “woke” culture, which he said “has been against Christian belief” and which Trump is fighting to change.
“Trump believes in God and supports Christianity,” he said, but added, “I don’t know about his lifestyle but he is just like all politicians. They twist around and lie all the time. In Burma, even Aung San Suu Kyi lies a lot.”
Pastor King regrets the suffering of people in Myanmar resulting from the cutoff of aid from the US but believes that reductions in international support for the country will hurt the military regime more than everyday people, who will suffer with or without international aid.
More vocal segments of the community supporting Trump mask the presence of quieter voters who oppose Trump but keep their politics to themselves to avoid social friction at this particularly charged political moment.
They include Jack, a Buddhist from Mon State and small business owner in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who didn’t want to use his real name.
“We’ll see how great America will be,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
He said that despite Trump’s lies and poor character, some people “still really believe him”.
“I didn’t vote for him. I never believed him. And I won’t ever believe him. When I consider a candidate, I always look at their moral behaviour,” Jack said.
While there is still little public criticism of Trump by the vast majority of his voters, Jack and others in the community said that expressions of support for Trump by Myanmar-Americans have become less public and more muted.
“Before, they publicly supported him. Now they are quiet but still don’t say anything bad about him because they don’t want people to know they made the wrong choice,” Jack said.
In other words, “they want to save face”, said Pastor King’s son Taung, who voted for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, who is now the health secretary in the Trump administration.
From the church pew to the ballot box
The connections between religion and politics have deep roots for Christian minorities in Myanmar, particularly the Chin, whose pastors tend to have powerful roles in the community. The first American Baptist missionaries arrived in the Chin hills in the late 19th century and the region is now overwhelmingly Christian. The population has also long suffered from poverty, conflict and oppression from the military, with churches being a precious source of support and solidarity.
“In Chin, there are no other institutions. The church is the only place where we come together,” said Bawi Lian Mang, a human rights activist and Chin community leader in Oakland, California.
Appeals to Christian solidarity by the Republican Party have therefore been especially effective at mobilising Myanmar Christian immigrants, he told Frontier following a church service in Oakland. Much of the outreach is conducted directly through highly politicised churches.
Bawi Lian Mang said the outreach for Trump resonates with Chin immigrants, especially those who are older, less media literate, less fluent in English and more conservative.
“They come here and see a guy who is holding a Bible saying, ‘I will protect Christians’,” he said.
Mike Haack, a long-time Myanmar advocate and board member of the Campaign for a New Myanmar, said Myanmar-Americans support Trump for largely the same reasons as other Americans who attend Evangelical Protestant churches: social issues such as abortion, gender identity and a “general ‘screw-the-man’ kind of anti-establishment scepticism of government”.
Because Myanmar-Americans are a relatively new community, not yet settled economically or politically, they are largely ignored by US political parties on a national level. As far as Haack knows, only then-Democrat Bernie Sanders made outreach to Myanmar-Americans in Burmese during the Iowa primary ahead of the 2020 election.
Haack, speaking to Frontier in a phone interview, said the political weight of Myanmar-Americans doesn’t come from their numbers, but from the political punch of the churches to which they belong. These churches make up a significant segment of the hardcore base of the Republican Party and Trump.
Haack said that after years of effort by advocates, the 2023 BURMA Act – a policy framework authorising funding that was passed by Congress but never “robustly” implemented – has now been effectively “defunded” as most of the potential implementation would have been done by USAID.
Asked about the apparent contradiction between Myanmar minorities’ support for Trump and their passion for the anti-regime opposition, Haack said he has seen a shift away from the “Free Burma” and “universal human rights” messages before the 2021 coup towards one focused more on national identity, territory and freedom for specific groups.
“‘My land for my people’ and ‘make it ours again’ are primary motivators for all sides of the conflict now. It fits with Trump’s nationalism,” he said.
Ma Thida, a well-known dissident writer and activist with long ties to the US, told Frontier that she is somewhat surprised by Myanmar-Americans’ broad and sustained support for Trump.
However, she said it’s understandable that more religious and less educated Myanmar immigrants would be influenced by much of the same online disinformation as other Americans.
“They are told, ‘The Democrats are doing nothing, they are just spending our tax money.’ That narrative is well consumed. Since the new arrivals don’t have much independent information or media literacy, they just follow along,” she said.
Trump’s hard line against China also has deep support in the Myanmar diaspora.
“Without Trump, we can’t fight against China” is another oft-heard argument, she said.
Ma Thida said there are also educated and professionally successful Myanmar immigrants who support Trump because they have less sympathy for those who are struggling, since they themselves have made it and simply don’t want to pay higher taxes.
But the general message from Myanmar-American Trump supporters is, “Even though we are not happy with what he is doing, we should just wait,” she said.
“I still can’t understand why they don’t want to come out and say, ‘We were betrayed.’ Instead they say, ‘He might have a solution in the future.’ Some express disappointment, but they don’t want to come out and say he’s bad.”