Don't Call Afrikaners "Refugees"

On the Death of US Refugee Resettlement

Fifteen years ago, I volunteered to help a young Eritrean refugee become oriented to his small apartment in north Dallas. I showed him how to count change, took him to his first minor league baseball game and his first NBA game, and enjoyed his culinary skills.

That kicked off a lifelong passion for refugee resettlement work, which morphed into leadership of a Board of Directors for a major refugee resettlement agency in Texas, overseas trips to witness refugee camps and settlements, and ultimately my current position as office director of a resettlement office.

Part of this passion is fueled by my Christian faith, of course. I came to the conviction quite early in my life that our religious tradition strongly and consistently affirms and supports immigrants.

But honestly, I can’t help but confess that another part of the fuel that drives my commitment to refugee resettlement is my understanding of who I am as an American. To be American means to be dedicated to an ideal of liberty, justice, democracy, human rights, and the welcome of immigrants.

For me, the words of Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty are not a hollow poem; they are as close to American Scripture as exists:

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Those words are not just for me, they are for anyone who needs them spoken to them.

Earlier this year, Trump indefinitely paused the US refugee resettlement program with a single executive order; then with the program dangling on life support and stayed by a judge’s order, he dealt a death blow by terminating federal contracts with all national refugee resettlement agencies.

The program is as good as dead; offices such as mine are simply closing out cases and wrapping up programs that will conclude at the end of the fiscal year.

But then, Trump orchestrated a kind of resurrection.

Today at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., 60 people will arrive, having been hastily vetted, examined, and approved for refugee resettlement in the United States of America. Who are these huddled masses, these wretched refuse, these desperate souls fleeing persecution and war?

White South Africans.

The Trump administration has opened the door to refugee resettlement once more. However, the definition of “refugee” has been stretched and distorted so greatly that the word has no more meaning. Because white South Africans, or Afrikaners, are not refugees in any sense of the word.

The United Nations’ 1951 Convention on Refugees formally defines refugees as people who “owing to well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

The Afrikaners who are landing at Dulles today are flying here FROM SOUTH AFRICA. They didn’t flee their country, nor do they have any reason to do so.

The arguments made in support of calling Afrikaners “refugees” come from extremist and racist talking points on social media, amplified by white South Africans like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. They complain that Afrikaners are victims of racial discrimination based on government policy, as well as victims of violence, as evidenced by a disturbing number of violent attacks on white farmers in recent years.

Keep in mind, however, the last 100 years of history in South Africa. Though a minority population, Afrikaners held power in South Africa from 1948 to 1994, during which it instituted a strict racial segregation policy of apartheid, which denied the majority population the right to vote, among other human rights. During this time, Afrikaners accumulated the bulk of national wealth, held most of the land, and kept the black population in poverty.

Since apartheid ended, the majority-black African National Congress (ANC) has held power in South Africa, and while the ANC has passed affirmative action measures in an effort to empower the black population and spread the wealth, white South Africans still have higher rates of wealth, employment, and health than their black counterparts. Corrupt and incompetent ANC leadership in recent years has given Afrikaners a wedge to complain of further discrimination and persecution.

In January 2025, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act which right-wing critics claim gives the state permission to seize property from white land owners without compensation. But this is not what the law does; rather, it adjusts some outdated apartheid laws and gives the state permission to take some properties without compensation in certain limited situations, related to public use.

Concerning the charge of violence, while there have been a number of attacks on white farmers, including murders, rape, and injury, law enforcement has repeatedly found that these are crimes committed for financial gain, not racial vengeance.

One more crucial point — when an Afrikaner is the victim of discrimination or crime, he or she still has constitutional protections; the rule of law and due process still holds in South Africa. The judicial system remains independent of political party machinations.

If white South Africans are refugees, then anyone can be a refugee. Literally anyone whom the President deems eligible can be a refugee now.

Accepting Afrikaners as “refugees” makes a mockery of every refugee currently sitting in a camp somewhere who had previously been cleared to arrive in the States because they truly have nowhere else to go.

Take note that the people he has accepted are white, while the people who have been denied entrance are not. Pay attention to the fact that Afrikaners are supposed victims of white racism. Note the extremely cynical politics that are being played here.

Trump is not resettling Afrikaners because they are in need of refuge. He is making a political statement, a coy and sly nod to racists and extreme-right factions.

Sadly, this means that henceforth, refugee resettlement in the US is morally bankrupt. There is no good humanitarian reason to take in Afrikaners; therefore, it’s clear that from now on, resettlement is a political calculation.

This is not why America resettles refugees. This is not the promise of America.

This is not why churches and temples and mosques have opened their doors to vulnerable people. This is not why humanitarians have chosen careers in public service and non-profit work.

I have nothing against the South Africans who arrive today in the US. I wish them well.

But I will not call them “refugees.”

To do so would be to betray everything I have done, everyone I have served, and everyone I have worked alongside in resettlement over the past fifteen years.