Earlier this month the top official at the US embassy in SA asked Washington for clarification on a contentious US policy: could non-whites apply for a refugee programme geared towards white South Africans if they met other requirements?
President Donald Trump’s February executive order establishing the programme specified it was for “Afrikaners in SA who are victims of unjust racial discrimination”.
In a diplomatic cable sent on July 8, embassy charge d’affairs David Greene asked whether the embassy could process claims from other minority groups claiming race-based discrimination such as coloured South Africans who speak Afrikaans.
The answer came back days later in an email from Spencer Chretien, the highest-ranking official in the state department’s refugee and migration bureau, saying the programme was intended for white people.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the precise language in the email described to the news agency by three sources familiar with its contents.
The state department, responding to a request for comment on July 18, did not specifically comment on the email and the cable, but described the scope of the policy as wider than the guidance in Chretien’s email.
The department said US policy was to consider Afrikaners and other racial minorities for resettlement, echoing guidance posted on its website in May saying applicants “must be of Afrikaner ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in SA”.
Chretien declined to comment through a state department spokesperson. Greene did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
The internal back-and-forth between the embassy and the state department, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the confusion about how to implement a policy designed to help white Afrikaners in a racially diverse country that includes coloured people who speak Afrikaans and whites who speak English.
To date the state department has resettled 88 South Africans under the programme, including the initial group of 59 who arrived in May. Another 15 were expected to arrive by the end of August, one source said. Trump, a Republican who recaptured the White House pledging a wide-ranging immigration crackdown, placed an indefinite freeze on refugee admissions from around the world after taking office, saying the US would admit only refugees who “can fully and appropriately assimilate”.
Weeks later he issued an executive order that called for the US to resettle Afrikaners, describing them as victims of “violence against racially disfavoured landowners”, allegations that echoed far-right claims that have been contested by the government.
Since the executive order, US diplomats working to implement the programme had been deliberating internally about which racial groups could be considered eligible, one source said.
In the July 8 cable, Greene laid out a summary of the different ethnic and racial groups in the country before seeking guidance on eligibility. In addition to Afrikaners and coloured South Africans, Greene mentioned Khoisan people.
He said members of the Jewish community had also expressed interest, but in SA they are considered a religious minority and not a racial group.
“In the absence of other guidance, [the US embassy] intends to give consideration to well-founded claims of persecution based on race for other racial minorities,” Greene wrote.
At least one family identified as coloured has travelled to the US as refugees, two people familiar with the matter said.
The cable forced the administration to clarify its position on whether the policy was for whites only, and if it did include other aggrieved minorities, who would qualify, two people familiar with the matter said.
Chretien, a conservative who wrote op-eds promoting the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025" plan to overhaul the federal government, is the senior official at the state department’s bureau of population, refugees and migration.
When asked about the programme in May, Trump said he was not giving Afrikaners preferential treatment because they were white. “They happen to be white, but whether they are white or black makes no difference to me,” he said.
In response to a request for comment, a White House official said the administration’s policy reflected Trump’s executive order.
“We will prioritise refugee admissions for SA citizens, including Afrikaners and other racial minorities, who have been targeted by the discriminatory laws of the SA government,” the official said.
During a combative Oval Office meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa in May, Trump showed a printed image of a Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as part of what he falsely presented as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans.
The South African Chamber of Commerce said earlier this year 67,000 people were interested in the programme.
Reuters
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