The Trump administration plans to give most of the country’s refugee spots next year to white South Africans, telling Congress on Tuesday that it will cap total refugee admissions at 17,500 and spend about $500 million resettling the new arrivals.
Every year, the White House sets a ceiling on how many refugees the United States will accept through its resettlement program. A refugee in this system is someone outside their home country who has been screened and approved because they face persecution there over things like race, religion, or political beliefs. The new cap covers fiscal year 2027, the federal government’s budget year, which begins in October. That 17,500 figure is the limit for the entire program, and the administration says the spots will go primarily to Afrikaners.
In its notice to Congress, obtained by The Associated Press, the administration claimed white South Africans have faced seizures of their land and other forms of persecution. It also argued they would be likely to assimilate once they arrive in America. South Africa’s government has repeatedly rejected the idea that Afrikaners are a persecuted minority in their own country.
Afrikaners are descendants of mainly Dutch and French colonial settlers who began arriving in South Africa in the 1600s. They are one of several groups of white South Africans, alongside those of British descent. Afrikaners were at the center of apartheid, the system of legal racial segregation that ruled South Africa from 1948 until 1994. That year, Nelson Mandela was elected the country’s first Black president in its first democratic elections open to all races. The AP reports that while their role in apartheid left lingering racial tensions, Afrikaners have generally embraced the country’s multiracial democracy like most other South Africans.
The scale of the change becomes clear against the program’s history. Since it launched in 1980, the refugee program has admitted an average of about 92,000 people a year, according to HIAS, a Jewish refugee aid organization. Trump cut admissions sharply during his first term. The Biden administration rebuilt the system and set a goal of admitting 125,000 refugees in its final year.
When Trump returned to the White House, he immediately suspended the program, leaving people around the world who had already been cleared to come to the United States stuck where they were. The administration later reopened it, but only for white South Africans. It initially set last year’s cap at 7,500, again mostly Afrikaners, then raised it to 17,500 after claiming that unforeseen developments in South Africa had created an emergency refugee situation. CBS News reports the administration has resettled thousands of Afrikaners over the past year and a half while keeping the program effectively shut for most other people fleeing violence and persecution.
Refugee resettlement groups pushed back on the plan. Naomi Steinberg, vice president for refugee and immigration policy and advocacy at HIAS, said the administration is “diminishing and distorting this legacy in service of its political whims.” HIAS said it will keep calling for a program that welcomes refugees from around the world who are persecuted for who they are and what they believe.
The $500 million price tag and the 17,500 spots now point mostly in one direction. A program that for more than four decades took in families escaping war and persecution across the globe is being built next year around white South Africans.
