On his first day in office, President Donald Trump suspended refugee admissions from around the world. In February, Trump made one exception—ordering the US government to promote refugee resettlement for white South Africans. Now, the first group of Afrikaners is set to arrive.
National Public Radio reports that a flight with 54 Afrikaners will arrive at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, DC, on Monday. In a highly unusual move, the administration plans to have high-level US officials meet the Afrikaners at the airport for a press conference, according to NPR. The administration is reportedly trying to charter a jet—presumably at US taxpayers’ expense—from Johannesburg to bring in the South Africans.
“It is most regrettable that it appears that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy.”
Timothy Young, a spokesman for Global Refuge, a resettlement agency, told the New York Times that thousands “of refugees from across the globe remain stranded in limbo despite being fully vetted and approved for travel, including Afghan allies, religious minorities and other populations facing extreme violence and persecution.” The fact that the Trump administration is bypassing those people in favor of white South Africans who have not met international criteria for refugee status lays bare the white nationalism at the heart of its immigration policy.
Chrispin Phiri, a spokesperson for South Africa’s foreign ministry, said in a statement provided to the New York Times that Afrikaners should not be considered refugees under international law. “It is most regrettable that it appears that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy,” Phiri stated. (The Trump administration has cut off aid to South Africa based on its specious claim about discrimination against white South Africans.)
Once in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services will help the South Africans find “temporary or longer-term housing,” according to a government memo obtained by the Lever and the New York Times. The memo states that the US government will also help them obtain “groceries, weather-appropriate clothing, diapers, formula, hygiene products and prepaid phones that support the day-to-day well-being of households.”
The Trump administration approved Afrikaners to come to the United States on an unusually fast timeline. As the Times reports:
Refugees can often wait years in camps around the world before they are processed and approved to travel to the United States. Before the first Trump administration, refugee resettlement took an average of 18 to 24 months, according to the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group for immigrants. Many refugees must wait years longer.
The Afrikaners, however, had to wait no more than three months.
In theory, much of the reason for bringing Afrikaners to the United States as refugees is a land reform law enacted earlier this year in South Africa. Elon Musk and others on the right have seized on the law to argue that white South Africans are being persecuted and are at risk of having their land unjustly confiscated.
Musk and the Trump administration are grossly misrepresenting the situation in South Africa. As I reported in February:
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa did recently sign a controversial law that expands the state’s ability to expropriate land—in some cases without providing compensation. But the law, which was signed by a democratically elected government and is motivated by a desire to address severe injustices imposed on Black people by past regimes, is not what Trump and Musk are making it out to be.
President Ramaphosa wrote on social media that the law is not “a confiscation instrument, but a constitutionally mandated legal process that ensures public access to land in an equitable and just manner as guided by the constitution.”
The Democratic Alliance, a more centrist and white-led party in South Africa, has opposed the law and has argued it needs to be amended. Nevertheless, the party strongly objected to Trump’s recent move and said in a statement released on Monday that “it is not true that the Act allows land to be seized by the state arbitrarily.” It added that funding cuts could have devastating consequences for vulnerable South Africans, explaining that the country is slated to receive $439 million this year for HIV/AIDs treatment and support. “It would be a tragedy if this funding were terminated because of a misunderstanding of the facts,” the party stressed.
More broadly, land reform is a response to the staggering inequity that still plagues South Africa. As of 2018, nearly two-thirds of Black South Africans lived in poverty, compared to just one percent of white South Africans.
South African business interests have similarly argued that Musk and others are wrong to portray the land reform law in such dire terms. As I also reported in February:
In response to an interview request, Wandile Sihlobo, the Chief Economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, directed me to an article he recently wrote about why there was no need to panic about the law. Fasken, a major international law firm, has taken a similar perspective. South African lawyers at the firm concluded that, while they have some reservations about sections of the law, it is generally “doubtful if the Expropriation Act will generally affect private property rights as envisaged” in the country’s constitution. Even the leader of AfriForum, a far-right group that largely advocates on behalf of white Afrikaners and vehemently opposes the Expropriation Act, has expressed concern with Trump’s decision to target South Africa so broadly.
None of this has stopped the Trump administration from twisting America’s refugee program—once a symbol of the country’s commitment to those fleeing life-threatening violence—into yet another avatar of white grievance.
On Friday, Stephen Miller, Trump’s anti-immigration deputy chief of staff, went as far to say that “what’s happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created.” His newfound sympathy for allegedly oppressed whites comes after spending much of his adult life smearing immigrants of color.
