Trump Administration raises US refugee cap for white South Africans
United States President Donald Trump’s administration said it will admit an additional 10,000 white South Africans to the country as refugees this year.
In a document dated 21 May, it said people of Afrikaner ethnicity are facing an unspecified “emergency refugee situation”.
This, it said, was due to the “incitement of racially-motivated violence” by the government and political parties in the majority-Black country.
Trump has claimed that members of the Afrikaner minority group are being persecuted and having their land taken away from them because of their race.
Pretoria, and numerous Afrikaner and other groups and organisations in South Africa, have repeatedly refuted his allegations.
Afrikaners make up about 60 per cent of the country’s white minority, which itself accounts for about 7.2 per cent of the population.
The move comes as thousands of people facing human rights abuses, political violence, and war around the world, are refused refugee status in the United States.
Democrats have described the move as “indefensible” and “betraying everyone else”, including Afghan allies and other approved and vetted refugees.
More than 6,000 South African “refugees” have already been admitted to the US this fiscal year, with three Afghans the only other people approved.
