Photo credit: Donald Trump shakes now Vice-President Mike Pence’s hands as his sons Eric, daughter-in-law Lara Yunaska, daughter Ivanka, Ivanka’s husband Jarred Kushner, son Donald jnr and wife Vanessa, and daughter Tiffany look on during the campaign.Credit:AP/File

When (former) U.S. President Donald J. Trump recently claimed that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” the world recoiled—not only at the cruelty of such rhetoric, but at the breathtaking hypocrisy behind it.

Trump is not just the child of immigrants. His entire personal life, marriage history, and even his children’s extended families are steeped in the immigrant journey. To condemn immigration so viciously while standing on the very foundation it provided him is to spit into the well from which one drinks.

Trump: The Son and Grandson of Immigrants

Let us begin with the facts:

• Friedrich Trump, Donald’s grandfather, was a German immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1885. He came with little and profited from ventures that included hotels and brothels during the Gold Rush. He was not a “pure-blooded American.” He was a migrant, no different in spirit than many of today’s asylum seekers and economic refugees.
• Mary Anne MacLeod, Trump’s mother, was born in Scotland. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1930 and worked as a domestic servant before marrying Fred Trump. Her accent never faded, and her paperwork reflected the immigrant experience—one of hope, uncertainty, and adaptation.

Thus, Donald Trump is the direct product of European migration. Yet, he dares to talk about protecting American “blood” as if it were something ancient and pure.

Trump’s Wives: Also Immigrants

Trump married Ivana Zelníčková, a Czech-born athlete and model, in 1977. She was a legal immigrant from communist Czechoslovakia. Together, they had three children—Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.

His current wife, Melania Trump, was born in Slovenia and arrived in the U.S. in the mid-1990s. There have been persistent reports—never fully resolved—that she may have initially worked in the U.S. while on a tourist visa, which would be a violation of immigration laws. Yet, she would later sponsor her own parents under the family reunification visa system—the very “chain migration” Trump himself criticized.

Trump’s Children: Intertwined With Migrant Families

Trump’s beloved daughter Ivanka married Jared Kushner, whose own family were Jewish immigrants who fled persecution in Eastern Europe. But it goes further:

• Jared Kushner’s father-in-law (Ivanka’s father-in-law), Charles Kushner, was the son of Holocaust survivors.
• Jared and Ivanka’s extended family includes Jewish, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern roots.

And what of Tiffany Trump, Donald’s daughter with Marla Maples? Her fiancé, Michael Boulos, is the son of a wealthy Lebanese businessman. Michael Boulos himself grew up in Nigeria and has Lebanese Christian heritage—yet another “immigrant” branch that enters the Trump family tree.

So, by any honest reckoning, Donald Trump’s grandchildren are the descendants of Germans, Scots, Czechs, Slovenians, Jews, and Lebanese Christians—all immigrants to the United States.

The Mirror Trump Refuses to Look Into

Why, then, would a man with such a richly migrant lineage preach xenophobia?

The answer may lie in the age-old political tool: scapegoating. History shows that demagogues often whip up fear against newcomers to energize a disillusioned majority. “Othering” works in politics—but it tears apart societies.

What makes Trump’s case worse is that his targets are not privileged European migrants like his own family, but mostly brown and black migrants from Latin America, Africa, and Muslim-majority countries. His “poisoned blood” remark reeks of racial hierarchy—not policy.

It is ironic that a Lebanese Christian, had he tried to enter the U.S. today under Trump’s proposed policies, might have faced extreme vetting or even denial. Yet, one such man is now the father-in-law of Trump’s own daughter.

Lessons for Myanmar Migrants and the World

For those of us from Myanmar—especially Muslims and ethnic minorities—Trump’s hypocrisy should serve as a reminder. Migrants are not poison. We are builders—of economies, of families, and of peaceful futures.

Whether Burmese Muslims in Malaysia, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, or Myanmar professionals in America and Europe—our stories deserve dignity.

The glass ceilings that hold us back can and must be shattered—not by conforming blindly, but by standing firm in truth and contribution. We must also resist the dangerous idea that we must “assimilate” entirely to be accepted. True multicultural societies thrive on mutual respect, not erasure of identity.

Let Trump’s contradictions be a mirror to a better truth:
That the sons and daughters of immigrants often become the very pillars of the countries they once struggled to enter.

U Aung Tin

နောက်မှဝင်လာတဲ့ အင်မီးဂရန့်တွေဟာ အမေရိကန်ရဲ့သွေးသန့်စင်မှုတွေကို ဖျက်ဆီးနေတယ်လို့ ဒေါ်နယ်ထရမ့်က ပြောတယ်။

သူ့အဖိုးလည်း အင်မီးဂရန့်ပဲ။

သူ့အမေလည်း အင်မီးဂရန့်ပဲ။

သူ့အရင်မိန်းမနဲ့ လက်ရှိမန်းမတို့ဟာ အမေရိကန်ကို လိမ်လည်ပြီး ဝင်ရောက်လာခဲ့တဲ့ အင်မီးဂရန့်တွေဖြစ်တယ်။

ထရမ့်မိန်းမ မလနီယာလည်း ဗီဇာစည်းကမ်းချိုးဖောက် လိမ်လည်ခဲ့တာတွေ ရှိနေလို့ သူ့မိန်းမကိုလည်း ပြန်ပို့လို့ရတယ်။

ထရမ့်မိန်းမ မလာနီယာနဲ့ရတဲ့ခလေး ဘိုင်ရွန်ကိုလည်း ပြန်ပို့လို့ရနေတယ်။

ထရမ့်ကိုအသည်းအသန် ထောက်ခံခဲ့ကြတဲ့ မွတ်စလင်မုန်းသူတွေနဲ့ လက်တီနိုတွေ ရင်ကွဲခန်းဖြစ်သွားပြီ။

သို့သော် စိတ်မကောင်းပါဘူး။