Donald Trump approved the immigration of 59 white South Africans to the U.S. under refugee status on May 12. These individuals are known as Afrikaners, a South African ethnic group who are descendants of Dutch and British colonists. Trump explained his reasons for welcoming them into the U.S., using what he describes as genocide, racial discrimination and land confiscation in post-apartheid South Africa as his reasoning. However, the South African government claims these allegations are “completely false,” as Afrikaners are among “the most economically privileged” in the country, according to PBS reporting.
Afrikaners are not refugees. The Trump administration’s decision to admit white South Africans as refugees reveals the racial double standard within the current U.S. immigration system, in which Trump has altered the true definitions of genocide, persecution and refugee status.
The experiences of actual refugees — who have fled wars, dictatorships and ethnic cleansing — clearly illustrate that allowing white South Africans into the U.S. under the same title is inaccurate.
Unlike refugees from places like Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine who are fleeing real wars and crises, these individuals are not being persecuted for their race, religion or political beliefs. Instead, Afrikaner farmers and President Trump are blowing this situation out of proportion.
This new shift in South African land distribution is the direct result of South Africa’s new expropriation law, which was established specifically to undo the racial barriers created by Africa’s apartheid era. This law gives the government the legal power to take private property for public use — such as building roads, schools or infrastructure projects — while ensuring fair compensation to property owners.
This is not a case of persecution. It is, quite simply, a slow and gradual effort to neutralize the systemic privilege that white South Africans have accumulated over generations of apartheid and colonial rule. It also shouldn’t come as a surprise, undoing the effects of apartheid discrimination has been a process occurring in many capacities since the South African election in 1994.
Under apartheid, Black South Africans were denied basic human rights, forced off their land and restricted from political power since 1948. For decades, Black South Africans were forcibly removed from their land while white families accumulated massive wealth and property through means of systemic oppression. The expropriation law is only attempting to undo centuries of inequality, while still ensuring compensation to landowners, without any explicit mention of taking land away based on race.
Even with these new neutralizing laws and actions, Afrikaners hold more power, wealth and land than the majority Black population in South Africa. Although only making up 7% of the population, they own approximately half of the farmland. Additionally, they dominate positions of wealth and power, occupying 64.7% of top management jobs despite being a small fraction of the labor force.
While circumstances that give way to personal success are important, these numbers show that Afrikaners are not being systematically persecuted in South Africa — especially when they continue to run many of the systems in the country. In fact, they benefit from a high quality of life and still retain considerable influence in South African society. There is certainly a different reason many Afrikaners wanted to leave it all behind.
While Afrikaners are being personally picked up at the airport, provided housing and even connected with local aid organizations, Trump is simultaneously ramping up efforts to block other migrants and asylum seekers from countries including Haiti, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Refugees who are all just as willing and able to work in the U.S., but just happen to be people of color. This is a clear example of racial bias, since Trump is providing no other justification for his decisions to block them. This is in addition to how stringent Trump has been with certain groups of migrants and asylum seekers over the years.
Trump’s claim that Afrikaners are experiencing “genocide” is not only false, but also inaccurate compared to the experiences of Jews, Armenians and other groups who have faced real genocides. The term is now being thrown around blatantly, flattening its true meaning.
There is no credible evidence to support the idea that white South Africans are being targeted for extermination or widespread violence. Neither of South Africa’s political parties, nor those who represent the white community in South Africa, have made this claim.
The Afrikaners who are accepting Trump’s offer, along with an estimated 70,000 out of a population of 2.5 million who have reportedly expressed interest in it themselves, are not fleeing imminent danger. They continue to benefit from disproportionate levels of economic power and a relatively privileged standard of living, regardless of whether they worked their way up the ladder. That’s simply not the reality most refugees face.
If an extreme genocide or racial persecution were occurring in South Africa, it stands to reason that all 2 million-plus Afrikaners would be desperate to leave. That clearly isn’t the case.
This double standard exposes the racial bias embedded in U.S. immigration policy. The refugee system was never meant to be used as a political tool to reward people who look a certain way or support the same ideology as another country’s leader, it is meant to protect the vulnerable.
Julia Kremenetsky is an Opinion Intern for the spring 2025 quarter. She can be reached at jkremene@uci.edu.
Edited by Casey Mendoza and Jaheem Conley.
