Trump welcomes white South African refugees while excluding Afghans and others

On the same day that dozens of white South Africans arrived in the United States as refugees, at the invitation of President Trump himself, his administration said that thousands of Afghans would be deported this summer.

Mr Trump’s immigration policy is littered with contradictions, embodied by the arrival of a chartered jet, paid by the US government, with dozens of Afrikaners who say that they are confronted with racial discrimination at home.

The focus of the Trump government on Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that ruled during apartheid, is especially striking because it effectively prohibits most other refugees and objectives, both legal and illegal immigrants for deportation. These include Afghans who received ‘temporary protected status’ after the disastrous American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, many of whom had risked their lives to help American troops.

Mr. Trump’s hard line about immigration helped him back to the White House, because voters from both parties expressed frustration about the issue. He has promised to carry out the largest deporting operation in American history, and one of the first executive orders of his second term was to suspend the resettlement of refugees in the United States.

But the decision of the administration to make an exception for white Afrikaners has asked questions about who the “right” immigrants are, according to Mr. Trump.

Christopher Landau, the deputy State Secretary, who greeted the Afrikaner refugees on Monday, reporters said that the group was ‘carefully screened’.

“One of the criteria was that refugees were not a challenge for our national security and that they could easily be assimilated in our country,” he said, without meaning, or why other populations would not be assimilated so easily.

Asked by a reporter to explain why people from South Africa were welcomed, even when Afghans lost their legal status in the United States, Mr. Landau suggested that the Afghans had not undergone sufficient background checks, and said that the Nichols administration had brought people that we were not carefully for national security testies. “

Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said that the protection for Afghan immigrants was always temporarily intended. Trump officials have argued that the temporary protected status is used incorrectly, so that people can stay in the United States indefinitely.

“Secretary called the decision to terminate TPS for persons from Afghanistan because the improved safety situation of the country and the stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country,” said Mrs. McLaughlin.

Mr. Trump has long deposited against refugees and claims that resettlement programs flood the country with unwanted people and criminals and terrorists in the United States.

But he has made an exception for Afrikaners, who say they have been discriminated against, have denied jobs and have been subjected to violence because of their breed. Mr. Trump said on Monday that the United States had ‘essentially extensive citizenship’ because he said they were the victims of a genocide.

There have been murders of white farmers, a focus of Afrikaner, but police statistics show that they are not more vulnerable to violent crime than others in the country.

Three decades after the end of apartheid, white South Africans continue to dominate land ownership. They are also effective at much higher rates than black South Africans and have much less chance of living in poverty.

P. Deep Gulasekaram, a professor of immigration legislation at the University of Colorado Law School, said that the exceptions were made for white Afrikaners – while other groups are kept out – “openly promote a story of global persecution of whites.”

The reasoning of the Trump government for denying the temporary protected status of Afghans is that Afghan migrants would not be confronted with a serious threat to their personal security because of a continuous reinforced conflict, “said Minister of Interior Security Kristi in a statement. (Serious personal threats of “constantly armed conflict” are among the specific criteria for temporary protected status in American immigration legislation.)

Experts in the situation in Afghanistan wondered that reasoning, and noted that the security threats continue to exist and that Afghans who worked with American troops during the 20-year occupation of America remain an extremely high risk of prison, torture or implementation.

After American troops had left the country, the Taliban officials said they would not perform reprisals against people who had helped the American troops or the former US government supported by the US.

But a 2023 Report by the Assistance Mission of the United Nations in Afghanistan Documented at least 800 human rights violations against former officials and members of the armed forces who served under the government supported by the US. The abuses include “extrajudicial murders, forced disappearances, random arrests and arrests, torture and poor treatment and threats.”

Former members of the Afghan army were at the greatest risk, according to the report, followed by national and local police officers and people who worked in the security director of the former government.

“What the administration did today is betray people who risked their lives for America, built his life here and believed in our promises,” said Shawn Vandiver, president of the Afghanevac group, in a statement.