The Trump White House is poised to dramatically reduce the number of refugees that will be accepted into the United States over the next fiscal year — with the ceiling falling a whopping 94% from the limit set by the Biden administration, according to a New York Times report.
Citing “people familiar with the matter,” the Times says a maximum of just 7,500 refugees would be admitted over the coming year, a tiny fraction of the 125,000 limit set by the Biden administration last year. Most of those slots would be reserved for white Afrikaners fleeing South Africa and its murderous violence against white people and the looming threat of uncompensated land confiscation. Afrikaners now represent less than 5 percent of South Africa’s population.
The pending reduction and prioritization of white refugees elicited condemnation from promoters of mass immigration. “Such a low refugee ceiling would break America’s promise to people who played by the rules,” Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) president Mark Hetfield, told the Times. “Trump isn’t just putting the Afrikaners to the front of the line, he is kicking years-long-waiting refugees out of the line.” HIAS has itself been hammered by Trump policies, slashing its staff by more than half after the new administration slashed funding for refugee programs.
In May, a group of 59 white Afrikaner refugees arrived in the United States via a chartered flight, raising eyebrows given the speed with which they were whisked into the country, in contrast to people from other countries who’ve faced waits that extend over years. “They tell quite harrowing stories of the violence that they faced in South Africa that was not redressed by the authorities by the unjust application of the law,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said after welcoming them to Dulles International Airport near Washington DC.
