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Trump’s South Africa obsession upends the US refugee program
Thousands of immigrants are set to arrive next year. Almost all of them are white South Africans.
The Trump administration notified Congress this week of plans to admit up to 17,500 refugees into the United States during the coming fiscal year. Notably, the vast majority of those refugees will be white South Africans, for whom this White House and President Donald Trump have become reliable international patrons.
By focusing almost exclusively on Afrikaners, the white South African ethnic group responsible for that country’s former system of apartheid, Trump and his allies have dramatically reshaped America’s refugee program as a whole. A change, critics argue, that is at the material expense of other at-risk communities worldwide.
How has Trump helped resettle white South Africans?
The White House has predominantly portrayed Afrikaners seeking to resettle in the U.S. as “victims of racial oppression in postapartheid South Africa,” said CBS News. The group faces “seizure of agricultural property without compensation,” laws designed to “dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education and business,” and “hateful rhetoric fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored minorities,” said the State Department in its notification to Congress, per the outlet. The South African government has “consistently denied” persecuting the primarily Dutch-descended community.
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Resettling the thousands of South Africans refugees is “expected to cost approximately $500 million,” said CNN. The push comes after Trump “increased the refugee cap for South Africans” in May, more than doubling it “from a limit of 7,500.” America’s refugee resettlement program had “historically enjoyed strong bipartisan support” for welcoming “tens of thousands of refugees from countries around the world to new lives in America,” said The Associated Press. “Instead,” Trump has “transformed it into a vehicle to resettle white South Africans in America.”
Why are critics concerned?
By focusing solely on South Africa at the expense of other refugee communities, the Trump administration is “stranding people fleeing persecution without the safety they’ve been promised after years of waiting,” said the immigration advocacy group HIAS in a statement. The White House is “diminishing and distorting” America’s refugee programs “in service of its political whims,” said Naomi Steinberg, the HIAS vice president of refugee and immigration policy and advocacy, in the same release.
After Trump “slashed the number of refugees approved every year” during his first term, said the AP, the Biden administration “built the system back up.” Then Trump “immediately” suspended it when he returned to office, “stranding people around the world who had been slated to come to the U.S.”
A refugee program that “centers one group and sidelines all others” is an “abdication of our global humanitarian leadership and an abandonment of thousands of vulnerable families,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president and CEO of refugee advocacy group Global Refuge, in a statement.
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What else has Trump done for white South Africans?
One week before notifying Congress of its new, almost exclusively Afrikaner refugee resettlement plan, the Trump administration announced it would “revoke U.S. visas or reject visa applications” from foreign nationals “responsible for discrimination against whites and other minority groups in South Africa,” said the AP. Trump had cited disparate instances of violence and various discrete local policies as “evidence of a larger antiwhite stance” in the country. In addition to encouraging Afrikaner resettlement in the United States, Trump last year “froze most foreign assistance to South Africa,” said Al Jazeera.
Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.
