Trump admin raises US refugee cap but only for white South Africans

Washington, May 26 (AP) The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will admit an additional 10,000 white South Africans into the US as refugees this year, increasing its historically low annual cap but still blocking people from other countries from entering through the programme.
     Trump suspended the refugee programme on his first day in office and, since then, has turned it into a vehicle to allow Afrikaners — a group of white South Africans descended mainly from Dutch settlers — into the US Advocates say the decision to focus a decades-old programme on one group has left people around the world fleeing war and strife stranded and with few options.
     The administration says Afrikaners are subject to persecution in their home country, a charge the government in South Africa denies.
     In the announcement Tuesday on the Federal Register, President Donald Trump said that because of “an unforeseen emergency refugee situation” he was raising the refugee cap. He blamed the South African government for “recent increases in the incitement of racially motivated violence" but gave no specific information.
     “I hereby determine that the admission to the United States of Afrikaners from South Africa in response to this emergency is justified by the grave humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest,” Trump said in the announcement.
     The administration indicated last year that it would admit up to 7,500, mostly Afrikaners, during the fiscal year stretching from October 2025 through September 2026, but last week, in a notice to Congress informing it of the increase, the administration said that “unforeseen developments in South Africa created an emergency refugee situation”.
     The change raises the limit to 17,500.
     The State Department has already admitted more than 6,000 people through the refugee programme since the beginning of the fiscal year in October, according to official data. All of those were from South Africa except for three people from Afghanistan.
     Presidents set the cap on how many refugees the US will admit each year, and historically, they've allocated those numbers across various geographic regions while factoring in wars or conflicts that spark humanitarian needs around the globe.
     The refugee programme, administered by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, is distinct from asylum. People hoping to come through the refugee programme must be living abroad and undergo vetting and other checks before being admitted to the US, whereas those seeking asylum are already on US soil.
     During his first administration, Trump slashed the number of refugees he admitted every year. Then the Biden administration built the system back up, setting a goal of admitting 125,000 refugees in his last year in office.
     Groups that have for decades helped resettle refugees in the US have sued to allow people who were in the refugee application process but are now stranded to be allowed to come to the US.
     “For nearly half a century, the US Refugee Admissions Program embodied a simple but powerful, bipartisan idea: that the United States would offer safety to the world's most vulnerable refugees,” said Beth Oppenheim, President & CEO of HIAS, in a statement. “This administration is now dismantling that legacy in plain sight." (AP) SCY
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(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)