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President Donald Trump has raised the cap on refugee admissions to the United States by 10,000, but only white South Africans will benefit.
According to an emergency order dated May 21, President Trump raised the refugee cap for this fiscal year from 7,500 to 17,500. That slot is reserved only for Afrikaners, South Africa’s white minority.
The order states that opening up an additional 10,000 slots exclusively for Afrikaners is “justified by significant humanitarian concerns and otherwise in the national interest of the United States.”
“Due to the recent increase in incitement to racially motivated violence by the South African government and prominent South African political party leaders, an unexpected and urgent refugee situation currently exists.”
President Trump has said Africans are victims of “genocide,” a claim that has been popularized on right-wing social media circles and supported by South African-born Elon Musk. The South African government disputes this characterization, saying crime statistics do not support claims that the country’s white farmers are targets of race-based violence.
Afrikaners were the dominant group under South Africa’s legal apartheid system, which was abolished in 1994. Some Afrikaners argue that a 2024 law that allows the government to take land “in the public interest” discriminates against them.
President Trump suspended the refugee program shortly after taking office in January 2025, and later that year lowered the cap on refugee admissions from 125,000 to a record low of 7,500. He also ordered a review of the approximately 197,000 refugees who were admitted to the United States while President Joe Biden was in office.
He made an exception for Afrikaners. The first group of Afrikaners to apply for asylum arrived in May last year. As of April, just over 6,000 refugees had been admitted to the United States this fiscal year, all but three of them from South Africa, according to State Department data.
Refugee advocacy groups slammed the new emergency order.
“This is not refugee protection. It is the politicization of humanitarian programs for ideological purposes,” Beth Oppenheim, president of the refugee organization HIAS, said in a statement.
The International Rescue Committee said it was “deeply concerned” by the order, noting that more than 128,000 “fully vetted” refugees were stranded after President Trump suspended refugee admissions.
“At a time of record global displacement, allocating limited refugee admissions overwhelmingly to one nationality leaves many of the world’s most vulnerable people without protection.”
