When Donald Trump announced in February 2025 that the US would accept Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees, many white South Africans who believed that they were victims of racism in their country thought that their prayers had been answered. However, in the past few months, dozens of applicants to the refugee programme have been rejected, with many left dismayed and confused as to why they would be left to face what Trump has falsely claimed is a “white genocide” in South Africa. After Trump’s February 2025 executive order announcing the resettlement programme, which was expanded to include members of a “racial minority”, the first group of 68 white South Africans arrived in the US that May.
The US also shut down the refugee programme for anyone else fleeing war and persecution. Since then, more than 13,000 have moved to the US, according to state department figures. Arrivals are also accelerating, with more than 2,600 admitted in August.
Afrikaners, descended from Dutch and French settlers, ruled South Africa during apartheid. The regime repressed the black majority, while keeping white people safe and wealthy. Since the end of apartheid more than 30 years ago, affirmative action policies have helped to create a black elite and middle class.
But about 38% of black South Africans are unemployed, compared with 9% of white South Africans, according to official data. Meanwhile, the “black economic empowerment” policies, along with high crime rates that affect everyone, have fostered a feeling among some white South Africans that they are now the victims of racial discrimination. The racist far right has also long highlighted brutal murders of white South African farmers, claiming them as evidence of white people being targeted.
Official crime data does not show farmers or white people experiencing crime at higher rates. That has not stopped Trump amplifying these claims, in the face of the South African government’s furious rebuttals. On 30 June, Facebook and WhatsApp groups for prospective and successful refugee applicants began to light up with news that people had begun to receive rejection letters.
This cannot be appealed,” the letters said, according to multiple rejections seen by the Guardian. It is unclear how many have been found ineligible. USCIS did not provide data on the total number of refugee applications and rejections.
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