It isn’t really surprising that Trump has shuttered refugee admissions, as he is a bone-deep racist and seems to think that people who seek asylum are literally coming from asylums.
But there is one very special group that Trump does want to come to the United States, and that’s white people. Well, a very specific group of white people: white South African Afrikaners.
This isn’t subtle or just some sort of inference. It’s in the Federal Register that the administration announced it would cap refugee admissions at 7,500.
“The admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa,” it explicitly states.
White Afrikaners arrive in the United States on May 12.
You know who doesn’t qualify? People of color from South Africa. Got it. And white people who are not descendants of the Dutch colonizers who brutally repressed the Black majority and implemented decades of apartheid don’t count either.
Trump has latched onto the entirely fake idea that there is a “white genocide” in South Africa. This racist lie has been pushed—surprise, surprise—by rich, white South Africans like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.
In reality, white farmers are not under siege. Indeed, of the 27,000 murders per year in the country, white people make up 1% of that. White people make up 7% of the population but own half of the country’s farmland.
Nonetheless, Trump cornered South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during an Oval Office visit, waving around a sheaf of papers he said were about violent attacks against white Afrikaner farmers.
"I don't know, all of these are articles over the last few days, death of people, death, death, death, horrible death," he said.
Honestly, this is just embarrassing. Trump is a doddering racist who was lucky enough to seize the levers of power, but all he knows how to do is hate.
Trump’s cap of 7,500 refugee admissions is the lowest since the program started. In contrast, former President Joe Biden set the goal at 125,000 for fiscal year 2024. That’s still too low, of course, but not criminally low—or transparently racist—like Trump’s number here. And, of course, under Biden, refugees came from everywhere—Africa, East Asia, Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, and South Asia. You get the picture.
Related | Trump's racist ambush of South African president gets even more bonkers
Trump originally thought that 30,000 victims of the imaginary white genocide would race to our shores, but he’s got one big problem: Most Afrikaners don’t want to come here. Their dream is to build whites-only enclaves in South Africa.
So they basically want apartheid back in their own country rather than having to relocate to the United States. Because sometimes you just want your racism at home in familiar surroundings, you know?
Dropping the cap down to 7,500 helps obscure the fact that Afrikaners are not racing to the United States. It’s far less embarrassing to say you hit a low refugee cap than admit that nowhere near 30,000 Afrikaners are clamoring to come here.
Instead, Afrikaners are coming to the United States in dribs and drabs, a few dozen at a time, to spread racist lies—just like Trump wants.
Can’t wait for little pockets of apartheid everywhere.
