Trump seeks to boost white South African immigration after numbers falter: Report

The Trump administration is weighing spending more than $300,000 on a programme to promote US immigration for white South Africans, after its prioritisation of the group in a new policy last year did not result in the application numbers the president had hoped for.

The prospective project was reported in The Guardian last week.

US President Donald Trump has alleged that Afrikaners - descendants of 17th and 18th century Dutch colonisers - are being persecuted, and has offered to give them an easier pathway to come to the US for protection. The South African government disputes the persecution allegations.

The proposed project would include holding focus groups in the cities of Pretoria and Krugersdorp in Gauteng, Bloemfontein and Kroonstad in Free State, Stellenbosch and Worcester in Western Cape, and Kimberley and Orania in the Northern Cape, followed by surveys to gauge interest in migration, The Guardian reported.

Trump's newly designated US immigration pathway is strictly for white South Africans and not all South Africans who may be facing marginalisation, suggesting that Trump's decision may be linked to retaliation against South Africa's International Court of Justice case against Israel, as well as its pursuit of strengthened financial and trade ties with China and Iran.

Another report in The Guardian last month said 13,000 Afrikaners arrived in the US over the last 18 months, but hundreds more were rejected, suggesting the pathway may not be as straightforward as it first seemed.

A 'white genocide'

Exactly one year ago, the Trump administration announced plans to drastically cut back the number of refugees to be accepted annually into the US to a record low, and give priority to white South Africans.

Under the new policy, the US would welcome only 7,500 refugees in fiscal year 2026, down from about 125,000 a year under former Democratic President Joe Biden.

The Trump administration later raised its cap to 17,500.

Sharif Aly, president of the International Refugee Assistance Project, slammed the Trump administration's decision in a statement shared with Middle East Eye at the time.

The announcement, he said, "highlights just how far this administration has gone when it comes to abandoning its responsibilities to displaced people around the world".

"By privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicising a humanitarian program," he added.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and a delegation of white South Africans who visited Trump in the Oval Office last year denied the allegation of a "white genocide" in their country, calling it baseless.

Trump's decision to suspend the US refugee resettlement programme after returning to office in January 2025 left at least 12,000 vulnerable people in limbo. They had been conditionally approved for resettlement and had flights booked before his inauguration, as well as almost 90,000 others who had been approved for resettlement.

The former Biden administration significantly increased the number of refugee admission slots but, in practice, did not admit that many.