By Evaristo Lara
President Donald Trump will allow 10,000 white South Africans to enter the United States because he believes that they have been persecuted by their country’s government for months.
Although the seventy-nine-year-old Republican continues to close the border to immigrants fleeing poverty and persecution mainly from Central America, Asia and Africa, his administration’s criteria are different when those requesting refuge come from nations located in other regions of the planet.
In the case of South African citizens, it recently formally raised the limit for years at the gate to 10,000.
The New York tycoon argues that the Afrikaners, an ethnic group formed by descendants of European settlers, mostly from the Netherlands, which first settled in Africa in the 17th century, They suffer “racially motivated violence.”
Until October of last year, the conservative president had limited the number of foreigners that the United States could receive as refugees to 7,500.
This amount represented the lowest in the history of said government program.
However, Trump’s perspective is that in South Africa thousands of white-skinned people are practically the object of intimidation and even violent actions for having a different skin color in a territory where the majority of the population is black.
He even argues that the government headed by Cyril Ramaphosa is confiscating property from Afrikaners and hence his empathy for welcoming them into the United States.
Through a statement, The Refugee Council, an organization in charge of helping resettle foreigners entering the United States, attacked Donald Trump for manipulating refugee law.
“He has corrupted the US resettlement program for a harmful ideological agenda that violates our true call to welcome and our legal obligations under US law.
A resettlement program that admits only one population, excluding tens of thousands of at-risk refugees around the world, does not constitute meaningful protection for refugees.
The United States is abandoning Burmese, Rohingya and Sudanese families fleeing brutal regimes and war zones, Congolese and Eritrean survivors of rape and ethnic violence, Afghan allies who were promised safety after risking their lives alongside American forces, and countless others.
The refugee law is not an instrument that the administration can ignore at will,” indicates part of the letter.
Keep reading:
• Trump sanctions South Africa and orders to prioritize resettlement of South African refugees of European descent
• Ramaphosa rejects Trump’s veto of South Africa at the 2026 G20 summit in the US.
• Trump’s “ambush” in the White House of President Ramaphosa for the alleged “target persecution” in South Africa
