Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is welcoming white South Africans into the country as “refugees,” an embrace that contrasts sharply with the administration’s treatment of nonwhite people seeking safety in the US.
What’s the latest? The administration this week welcomed approximately 50 white South Africans to the US, where, per Donald Trump, they’ll have a “rapid pathway to citizenship.” The embrace follows Trump’s first-day executive order suspending the US Refugee Admissions Program, arguing it was damaging to US communities. (That order is currently being contested in court.)
What’s the administration’s rationale for this exception? Trump suspended aid to South Africa in February over claims that South Africa was seizing white-owned land, and Trump on Monday accused South Africa of perpetuating an anti-white “genocide.”
Is that true? No. South Africa’s new law would allow judges, in certain, narrow circumstances, to redistribute land. The law is yet to be used, per the Washington Post. And while South Africa has a tragically high murder rate, there’s no evidence whites are systematically targeted, according to Agence France-Presse. What is true is that white South Africans control a massively disproportionate share of the country’s wealth and were the beneficiaries of colonialism and apartheid rule.
For more on what’s happening in South Africa, check out Nicole’s interview with an apartheid historian.
So what’s really going on here? The Trump administration is using false pretenses to single out a white minority for refugee assistance while at the same time dramatically pulling back on refugee assistance for basically everyone else — including peoples enduring far worse persecution than anything whites are facing in South Africa.
