This story deserves attention but when I searched Daily Kos to see if it had gotten any coverage, I found just a single diary — an excellent write-up for sure, but overlooked by the community. So consider this both a quick update and a diary rescue of sorts :-)
First the diary in question:
Will someone please think of the poor, defenseless white South Africans?
by Alonso del Arte — Wednesday, May 07, 2025 at 5:21:29p EDT
So much for “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Instead give me your white supremacists who are annoyed and inconvenienced by the efforts of the South African government to right the wrongs of the past. They’re the true victims of systemic racism.
Donald Trump, ever concerned with fairness, with morality, with law and order, and no doubt spurred by South African expat Elon Musk, has decided to do something to help those victims of racism in South African.
read the rest…
And a bit of an update:
The Trump administration is chartering a plane to bring the first white South Africans to the U.S. as refugees (NBC News)
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February granting an exception for Afrikaners after suspending the U.S. refugee admissions program.
May 9, 2025, 8:18 PM EDT
By Abigail Williams and Gabe Gutierrez
A group of white South Africans will be arriving in Washington, D.C., on Monday by way of a State Department-chartered plane to be resettled in the U.S. as refugees, a source familiar with their arrival told NBC News.
Their resettlement comes even though President Donald Trump suspended the State Department’s refugee admissions program through an executive order on the first day of his second term.
The group’s scheduled arrival as the first white South Africans to enter the U.S. as refugees was first reported by The New York Times on Friday.
read the rest…
As the linked NBC News piece above points out:
Under the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, a refugee is defined as someone with a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”
And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that South African Deputy Minister Alvin Botes “disputed the Trump administration’s position that the white South Africans are refugees, adding that the “allegations of discrimination are unfounded.””
Trump Adviser Stephen “Paul Joseph Ghoulbbels” Miller was of course quick to jump to the defense of the administration:
“What’s happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created,” Miller said. “This is race-based persecution. The refugee program is not intended as a solution for global poverty, and historically, it has been used that way.”
So yeah, if all goes according to plan, our first batch of refugees will be flying into Dulles Airport on Monday on a chartered plane — and met by “high level officials from the Departments of State and Homeland Security” complete with a press conference — totally normal.
First Afrikaners granted refugee status due to arrive in U.S. (NPR)
The sources said a press conference was planned for the group's arrival at Dulles airport, which would be attended by high level officials from the Departments of State and Homeland Security.
States that have agreed to take in the South Africans include: Alabama, California, Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New York, Nevada, North Carolina and Iowa, one source said. Several of the people granted refugee status have family ties in the U.S., they said.
The source noted it is unusual for refugees to be welcomed at the airport by U.S. dignitaries, and said the process of interviewing them in South Africa and granting them refugee status has been unusually quick.
read it all…
Oh, I guess NOT totally normal.
