US Plans to Admit 17,500 White South African Refugees, Citing Emergency

The US government announced Monday that it will increase the number of white South Africans admitted as refugees this year from approximately 7,500 to 17,500, claiming that “unforeseen developments in South Africa created an emergency refugee situation.”

Since beginning his second term last year, President Donald Trump has repeatedly made false claims that white Afrikaners face racial targeting and a “white genocide,” assertions that South Africa’s government has vehemently rejected.

The Trump administration has also cut aid to South Africa, boycotted the G20 summit in Johannesburg last year, and disinvited South Africa from this year’s G20 summit, which will be held at one of Trump’s resorts in Miami.

The US began admitting white South Africans as refugees in May 2025, while simultaneously suspending the refugee settlement program for people fleeing war and persecution from countries including Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan.

During the last full fiscal year before Trump took office, which ended in September 2024, the US admitted more than 100,000 refugees.

On Monday, the US State Department sent Congress an emergency notice stating it would admit up to 17,500 Afrikaners as refugees in the year ending September 2025. In October, the government had said it would admit just 7,500 refugees in total, predominantly white South Africans.

The cost of resettling an additional 10,000 white South Africans would be about $100 million (£75 million), according to the Associated Press, which reviewed a copy of the notice.

The State Department said the South African government’s rhetoric “across multiple ministries and political parties has sought to undermine the US resettlement program and attacked Afrikaners.”

It also cited a South African raid on a US refugee processing center in December, which the US government at the time called “unacceptable.”

South Africa’s government defended the action, stating it had deported seven Kenyans working illegally in the country without permits.

“This escalating hostility heightens the risks to Afrikaners in South Africa, who are already subject to far-reaching government-sponsored race-based discrimination,” the State Department notice said.

Afrikaners, descended from Dutch and French settlers, ruled South Africa during the apartheid era, repressing the black majority and ensuring the white minority’s safety and wealth.

Affirmative action policies implemented after apartheid helped create a black elite and middle class, but more than 30 years after Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president, the country remains deeply unequal.

According to official data, about 12% of white South Africans are unemployed, compared with 48% of black South Africans.

Nonetheless, “black economic empowerment” policies, along with high crime rates affecting all residents, have fostered a feeling among some white South Africans that they are now victims of racial discrimination.

The conspiracy theory of a white genocide has long been a staple of the racist far right, highlighting incidents where white farmers were murdered. In recent years, it has been amplified by South Africa-born billionaire Elon Musk and rightwing media personality Tucker Carlson.