Why some Chinese-Americans agree with Trump’s ‘Muslim travel ban’
Chinese were kept out of the US for decades until 1943, so why the support for one of the US president’s most controversial policies?
Opinions among Chinese-Americans about President Donald Trump’s effort to ban the citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States are typically American – that is, strongly divided.
A revised version of the controversial ban, which will deny entry to citizens from Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, is set to come into force on Thursday, provided it clears any further legal challenges.
And with polls showing the US as a whole is separated on the issue by economics, education or political affiliation – a recent Monmouth University poll shows 50 per cent of Americans think Trump should “move on” to other issues – Chinese-Americans find themselves on opposite sides of a generational gap.
Like most of her friends and their families, Jenny Cheung, 40, is a Chinese-American immigrant and fervent supporter of Trump and his push to shut America’s borders to large groups of outsiders.
“We all understand America is a nation of immigrants,” Cheung said. “But it does not necessarily mean we should encourage illegal immigrants to cross the border.”
Cheung, a web app developer living in Braintree, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children, first arrived in the US in 1990 and became an American citizen in 1995 when she was 25 years old.
