Two events that took place last Monday demonstrated how misguided the priorities of the current administration are when it comes to immigration policy. The first is when Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau welcomed around 60 white South Africans claiming refugee status. President Donald Trump has said that these white South Africans, known as Afrikaners, are facing a genocide in their home country. That is patently false.
The second event was when U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the TPS (temporary protected status) for Afghan nationals would be allowed to expire. Unless those Afghanis have a different immigration status that allows them to remain here, they will start being deported on July 12. The cruelty of the current administration is laid bare when we contrast the situation of those Afghanis to those of the Afrikaners we just welcomed with open arms.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a refugee is defined as someone who “demonstrates that they were persecuted or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.” Those who apply for refugee status with the United States undergo an extensive vetting process to determine the validity of their claim before they are allowed to come here. In January, the Trump administration paused refugee admissions, a policy that remains in effect as of this writing. But the Trump administration has made an exception to their rule for these Afrikaners who are not experiencing any kind of war.
Afrikaners make up about 7% of the South African population and are descended from the colonizers who imposed the brutal apartheid regime for most of the 20th century. A study done in 2014, 20 years after apartheid ended, found that Afrikaners have an average monthly income of $6,138 as compared to $552 in black households. A 2023 study found that the white unemployment rate in South Africa was 7.5% as compared to 40% of black South Africans. As of last year, Afrikaners held 62.9% of the top management jobs in South Africa despite being only 7% of the population, compared to black South Africans who held only 16.9% of those top jobs while making up 80% of the population. Black South Africans hold just 4% of farms and agricultural holdings while Afrikaners hold 72%.
These numbers do not draw the picture of people who are being oppressed or who have to flee their country due to political violence. There is race-based violence there, as there is here, but that is crime, not oppression, and certainly not genocide as the Trump administration claims. Trump has also cited a land reform law in South Africa which allows the government to take private land for public use. These laws are similar to the eminent domain provisions found in the Fifth Amendment of our own constitution. One difference between the two is that there are exceptions where the South African government can take the land without compensating the owner. Those exceptions include when an owner is not developing the land and waiting for property values to rise to sell, a government agency has acquired it and has no use for it, if the land has been abandoned, or if the government has spent more money than the land is worth in developing it. There are no examples as of this date of the South African government seizing land without compensation.
Contrast the conditions described above to the millions of people around the globe fleeing war, violence, and famine. At least 25,000 Afghanis who helped us during our occupation of Afghanistan, which puts their lives in danger under the Taliban regime, remain in third countries waiting for refugee status. Another 50,000 haven’t escaped Afghanistan yet. These are people who risked their lives to help our servicemen and women and now we’re turning our backs on them.
I don’t mind Afrikaners applying for refugee status, but they should have to follow the same process as everybody else. These Afrikaners that were welcomed last week didn’t have to go to a third country and wait for their applications to be vetted (a process that often takes upwards of two years). Instead, they were made eligible for refugee status in February and arrived here last week.
Returning the Afghanis who aided our military to Afghanistan is clearly more dangerous than the current situation for Afrikaners in their home country. The current administration’s policy does not demonstrate long-held American values about helping our allies nor does it serve American interests (locals are much less likely to stick their necks out for us if they don’t think they can count on us). It simply demonstrates the deep-seated racism of this administration and further damages our image abroad