White South Africans fast-tracked for refugee status set to arrive in U.S. on Monday

A group of 49 white South Africans are set to arrive at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on Monday, after having been offered refugee status under a new program from the Trump administration.

Refugee groups have questioned why the white South Africans are being prioritized ahead of people from countries racked by war and natural disasters. Vetting for refugee status in the U.S. often takes years. 

The Trump administration has fast-tracked their applications while pausing other refugee programs, halting arrivals from Afghanistan, Iraq, most of sub-Saharan Africa and other countries in a move being challenged in court. An app developed by the previous U.S. administration to help alleviate crowding at the border, and used my many asylum seekers from Latin America, has also been discontinued by the White House. 

They are the first Afrikaners — a white minority group in South Africa — to be relocated after Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 7 accusing South Africa’s Black-led government of racial discrimination against them and announcing a program to offer them relocation to America. 

The Trump administration says the South African government is pursuing racist, anti-white policies through affirmative action laws targeting Afrikaners’ land through a new law signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa this year that could theoretically expropriate land from some farmers without compensation.

Three-quarters of South Africa’s private land is still white-owned and not a single expropriation has taken place, however. The Democratic Alliance, one of several government coalition partners, has challenged the legality of the new law in court. 

As well, Trump first railed about land being taken away from white farmers during his first presidency in 2018, when an update to South Africa’s apartheid-era laws concerning land reform was only being considered.

Group headed to U.S. not refugees: Ramaphosa

The South African government said Afrikaners — who are the descendants of Dutch and French colonial settlers — are “amongst the most economically privileged” in the country. There are around 2.7 million Afrikaners among South Africa’s population of 62 million, which is more than 80 per cent Black. 

They are only one part of the country’s white minority, but the Trump administration refugee program only offers relocation to Afrikaners, who are largely seen as holding conservative and Christian values that might align with the politics of the Trump administration.

The average white household in South Africa owns 20 times the wealth of the average Black household, according to the Review of Political Economy, an international academic journal. 

“A refugee is someone who has to leave their country out of fear of political persecution, religious persecution or economic persecution and they don’t fit that bill, they don’t fit that description,” Ramaphosa said Monday while attending the Africa CEO Forum in Ivory Coast.

Trump and his South Africa-born adviser Elon Musk also claim that Afrikaners are being targeted in racially motivated attacks in some rural communities. 

There were 49 farm homicides in 2023, according to AfriForum, and Afrikaner group that records farm attacks. That number is actually down significantly from 2013 to 2017, when between 62 and 72 such homicides were noted each year. 

It is also against a backdrop of deadly violence that continues to plague South Africa overall, with over 20,000 homicides per year recently, and a significant percentage are Black victims.

“The idea of white victimhood suggests that bad things happening to white people are infinitely worse than the same things happening to anybody else,” said Nicky Falkof, head of the Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of Witwatersrand, told Reuters recently.  “So when crime happens to white people, it’s not simply crime, it’s a targeted racial genocide.”

Case against Israel another sticking point

The new U.S. administration within days criticized the South African government, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he wouldn’t attend a G20 meeting of foreign ministers in Johannesburg in February. That city hosts the G20 summit in November.

In addition to its position on the rural land law, the U.S. administration has been angered by South Africa lodging a genocide case against U.S. ally Israel over the conduct of its military campaign in Gaza, which was precipitated by attacks led by militant group Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.

The migrants are expected to be greeted at Dulles by a U.S. government delegation, including the deputy secretary of state and officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, whose refugee office has organized their resettlement. 

The HHS Office for Refugee Resettlement was ready to offer them support, including with housing, furniture and other household items, and expenses like groceries, clothing, diapers and more, a document obtained by The Associated Press said. The document said the relocation of Afrikaners was “a stated priority of the Administration.” 

The South African government said though there was no justification for them being relocated, it respected their freedom of choice and couldn’t stop them.

In 2018, Australia’s then-conservative government also considered fast-tracking Afrikaner farmers, sparking a diplomatic spat with South Africa. The plan never came to fruition.