EXCLUSIVE | US doubles down on Afrikaner persecution claim, keeps them top of refugee queue - IOL

While people fleeing wars, political violence and humanitarian crises all around the world face increasingly tight restrictions on entering the US, Washington says it remains committed to resettling Afrikaners as refugees.

And while claims that Afrikaners are under attack in SA have been debunked time and again, Donald Trump's administration continues to cling to the narrative, portraying the minority group as victims of persecution and racial discrimination.

"The Department of Homeland Security is committed to resettling Afrikaner refugees who are being persecuted by the SA government," US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesman Zach Kahler told IOL on Thursday.

The State Department, which runs the programme jointly with Homeland Security, said its decision was based on concerns about discrimination and threats faced by Afrikaners.

"President Trump has been very clear that we are prioritising the resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, a US policy indicated in EO 14204," it told IOL.

"The lives and property of Afrikaners have been endangered by politicians who incite race-based violence against them, threaten to confiscate their farms without compensation, and prop up a corrupt race-based scoring system that discriminates against Afrikaners in employment."

Kahler said not every applicant was accepted and that those whose applications were rejected had no right to appeal the decision.

"USCIS notifies aliens found ineligible for continued processing through the US Refugee Admissions Program, including those found ineligible for public safety concerns or criminal histories," he said.

"This cannot be appealed. This administration will always prioritise the safety and welfare of the American people."

Neither department would disclose how many South Africans had applied, how many had been accepted and how many had been rejected.

Arrivals data from the State Department's Refugee Processing Center showed that the US admitted 10,258 refugees between October 1 and July 31.

Of those, 10,255 were South Africans.

The other three were Afghans who were resettled in Colorado in November.

The figures reflected how the programme was designed.

"The admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from SA," the determination Trump signed setting this year's intake said.

In the American financial year before this one, the US admitted 342 SA refugees in total.

Its two largest intakes that year were Afghans, at 6,758, and people from the Democratic Republic of Congo, at 5,672.

Both groups have since been almost entirely locked out.

Trump suspended the whole US refugee programme on January 20 last year, days after taking office, stranding tens of thousands of people who had already sat their interviews and cleared security checks after years of waiting.

The order, headed Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program, said allowing refugees in would harm American interests.

Eighteen days later, Trump signed a second order, titled “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of SA”, which created an exception for one group.

It directed US agencies to prioritise the resettlement of Afrikaners in SA.

The first was the Expropriation Act, which President Cyril Ramaphosa had signed on January 23 last year, three days after Trump had suspended the US refugee programme.

The Act set out how the state could expropriate property for a public purpose or in the public interest and allowed for nil compensation in limited circumstances.

No land had been expropriated under the Act.

AfriForum, the DA and the Institute of Race Relations challenged it in the Western Cape High Court, seeking to have it declared unconstitutional.

The second reason was SA's case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

"SA has taken aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the ICJ," the order said.

Pretoria lodged the case at the court in The Hague in December 2023, arguing that Israel’s conduct in Gaza breached the Genocide Convention.

The court ordered Israel in January 2024 to take steps to prevent acts of genocide.

SA filed its main written argument in October 2024, and Israel filed its answer in March this year, disputing both the court's jurisdiction and the substance of the claim.

The court ordered a further round of written arguments in May, with the case still to be heard on its merits.

The first group of 59 South Africans landed at Dulles airport outside Washington on May 12 last year, where they were met on the tarmac by the then deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau.

Trump set the refugee ceiling for the current American financial year at 7,500, the lowest since the US refugee programme was created in 1980 and down from 125,000 the year before.

He raised it to 17,500 on May 21, reserving all 10,000 additional places for Afrikaners.

"An unforeseen emergency refugee situation now exists," the determination said.

It attributed the emergency to increases in the incitement of racially motivated violence by the SA government and by leaders of prominent political parties.

But it named no incidents, officials or political parties.

The State Department put the cost of the additional 10,000 admissions at about $100m in the proposal it sent to the US Congress in May, according to AP.

The programme also departed from the way refugees were recognised elsewhere in the world.

International refugee law defined a refugee as someone who was outside their own country, and applicants were generally processed only after they had fled.

Trump’s determination expressly allowed Afrikaners to be treated as refugees while they were still in SA, with interviews conducted at the US embassy in Pretoria.

Those who were accepted flew to the US on tickets they had to repay in instalments once they found work, and received a $2,000 grant on arrival.

According to State Department placement figures published in April, more than 500 of the new arrivals were placed in Texas, while Florida and California took most of the rest.

Ineligibility letters dated June 30 had been sent to applicants in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, giving no reasons for the decisions and no route of appeal.

Many of those who received the letters had already resigned from their jobs, sold their possessions, received the required vaccinations and completed orientation courses for people preparing to leave.

Chris Wyatt, a retired US Army colonel who had closely followed the programme and advised applicants through his online channel, put the number of rejections at between 500 and 1,000.

Cabinet said on July 30 that anyone turned away would be welcomed home and would face no persecution for having tried to leave.

"The returning South Africans will always be welcomed," minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said.

She said cabinet had noted allegations that white South Africans who chose to resettle in the US under what she called the falsehood of a white genocide had been refused visas there.

Applications are handled in SA by RSC Africa, run by the American aid organisation Church World Service, and by Amerikaners, an organisation set up to work on the programme after Trump signed the executive order.

The State Department declined to discuss either arrangement.

"We do not comment on internal programme operations," its spokesperson said.

The programme was being challenged in the US courts by the International Refugee Assistance Project, which argued that refugees from other countries had been unlawfully blocked from applying while South Africans were fast-tracked.

Pretoria rejected the persecution claim from the outset.

The Department of International Relations and Cooperation told Washington the resettlement of South Africans as refugees was politically motivated and intended to undermine confidence in the country’s constitutional democracy.

"We reiterate that allegations of discrimination are unfounded," it said.

The department said that even if such allegations existed, they did not meet the threshold of persecution required under SA and international refugee law.