President Donald Trump’s racist policy of welcoming white South Africans while excluding refugees from other countries is back in the spotlight after his administration raised its refugee ceiling — to bring in more white people.
Trump increased the refugee admissions ceiling by 10,000 for this year to allow more white South Africans to come into the country, a signed presidential determination reviewed by Reuters showed.
The document, dated May 21, said white South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity face an emergency situation due to the “incitement of racially motivated violence” by the government and political parties in the majority-Black country.
The document, found here, cites an “unforeseen emergency refugee situation” that doesn’t actually exist. Trump and his allies have pushed false claims that a “white genocide” is occurring, but South Africa’s government — and even advocacy groups representing the country’s white Afrikaner minority — have rejected the claim.
Reuters reported that the increased refugee limit is now 17,500 — and that only three non-South African refugees have been admitted into the U.S. this fiscal year. Reuters previously reported that the administration wanted to bring in 4,500 white South Africans immigrants per month, a number that I noted mirrors the number of white German refugees the Ku Klux Klan wanted to welcome to the United States a century ago — when its members were popularizing xenophobic slogans like “America First” and launching campaigns of racist terror against people of color.
It’s noteworthy here that white supremacists have latched on to racist conspiracy theories, such as the “replacement theory,” saying that there is some kind of plot to replace white Americans with nonwhite people, particularly foreigners. In reality, what’s actually underway is the exact opposite: a government effort to deport nonwhite people in America — including people who have lived in the U.S. for years — while Trump’s regime takes steps to import white people, and as some conservatives fret over white birth rates.
It’s hard to imagine the klan itself wouldn’t approve of this policy.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.