By Januarius Asongu

Prevailing models of immigrant political behavior in the United States commonly predict alignment with progressive parties based on material self-interest, minority status, and vulnerability to exclusionary immigration policy. Yet during the Trump era, a visible subset of continental African immigrants expressed support for Donald Trump despite nativist rhetoric, restrictive immigration measures, and personal moral scandal. This article argues that the apparent paradox is best explained by two mutually reinforcing mechanisms: (1) the prioritization of sexual conservatism—particularly opposition to LGBTQ rights and “gender ideology”—as a supreme cultural interest that overrides other political considerations; and (2) “citizenship insulation,” the belief among many naturalized immigrants that having already secured U.S. citizenship largely shields them from anti-immigrant policy harms, enabling them to vote primarily on cultural issues. Drawing on a qualitative, interpretive methodology informed by critical realist sensibilities and symbolic boundary theory, the study shows how pre-migration socialization in African religious and political contexts frames sexual normativity as a non-negotiable civilizational boundary. In the diaspora, this worldview is reinforced through religious institutions and transnational digital media, generating a single-issue voting framework in which a candidate’s stance on sexuality and gender becomes the dominant litmus test. A comparative analysis with African American Christian conservatives highlights the distinctiveness of the immigrant case, shaped by imported moral frameworks, different experiences of racial linked fate, and a political psychology of exceptionalism. The article concludes that diaspora political analysis must take seriously how moral boundary-making—amplified by transnational networks—can reshape partisan alignment even against seemingly obvious policy interests.