(Dobbs) “This decision doesn’t just lower the refugee admissions ceiling. It lowers our moral standing.”If people pleading for refugee status have to show a valid fear of persecution, then right now, white Afrikaners shouldn’t rank high on the list.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Those are the words inscribed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Lady Liberty and the nation that stands proudly behind her has welcomed those huddled masses since 1892. But now, in the age of Donald Trump, we need a second sentence: “Especially if they are white, and speak English, and aren’t all that oppressed.” After signaling his intent on his first day in office to suspend this rich nation’s long-revered refugee resettlement program, which last year alone admitted roughly 100,000 desperate people— people escaping war and oppression, poverty and famine, religious intolerance and political persecution— this week Trump made it official. His White House posted this in the Federal Register: “The admissions of up to 7,500 refugees to the United States during Fiscal Year 2026 is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest. The admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa pursuant to Executive Order 14204, and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands.” Don’t miss the import of this. Not just the drastic cut in numbers from 100,000 to 7,500, but the makeup of those privileged to win this lottery: “Afrikaners from South Africa.” Let me tell you about Afrikaners from South Africa. For ABC News, I covered South Africa from time to time, mainly because a civil war between the black majority and the white minority was considered inevitable. On my very first trip there, after a long overnight flight from London, I checked into my Johannesburg hotel and went out for a walk. Just around the corner from the hotel was a large appliance store with big plate glass windows, and standing outside the windows staring in was a crowd of black South Africans. They weren’t going in, they were just staring in. The answer I got when I asked why has forever since stuck in my mind as a symbol of the segregation and discrimination that dominated South Africa for almost 50 years: the policy known as apartheid. And the answer was simple: the apartheid government required black citizens in Johannesburg primarily to live in the mostly ramshackle black township of Soweto (which is merely an abbreviation for South West Township). But here’s the thing: almost all of Soweto had no running water and no electricity. So all these people staring at those appliances might as well have been staring at the moon. They could never aspire to have refrigerators or washing machines or anything else that runs on electricity because they had no place to plug them in. Thanks to apartheid. Whose policy was apartheid? Who controlled the government that for almost 50 years sometimes viciously enforced it? Who created apartheid? Afrikaners from South Africa. White descendants of Dutch, German, and French settlers who populated the country since the 1600s and ruled it until apartheid officially ended in 1994. That doesn’t mean that the Afrikaners who Trump now welcomes with open arms are as racist as their forefathers. But their claims convinced him that in their black majority and black governed homeland, they are the victims of reverse racial discrimination. The first 59 of them were flown in mid-May to Washington’s Dulles Airport and given refugee status. The president said he admitted them because of “the genocide that’s taking place.” This might have been inspired by Trump’s onetime First Buddy Elon Musk, himself a native of South Africa, who posted earlier this year that a black political party there was “actively promoting white genocide” with an anti-apartheid song called “Kill the Boer.” Boer was an early word for Afrikaner. But really, are “Kill the Boer” and “Hang Mike Pence” all that different? In any event, grievances about genocide are dubious. Afrikaners have been killed over the years, but according to police statistics, in no greater numbers than blacks. It’s called crime. Their complaints about reverse discrimination are equally dubious. Whites make up not quite 20% of the population of South Africa but they still earn nearly twice as much per capita as blacks. Some black South Africans have grabbed the brass ring and live as luxuriously as the whites who once oppressed them. But I’ve visited slums on the outskirts of the cities and most still inhabit them, carrying water from wells and sharing outhouses with a hundred other residents. The real grievances come from world citizens far afield from South Africa, from truly tyrannized refugees like Afghans, Rohingyas, Palestinians, Sudanese, and others, people who live every hour under their oppressors’ swords. Trump said his new severe limit on admitting refugees is justified by “humanitarian concerns” and the “national interest.” But what about these people, some of whom have spent years formally applying for refugee status in America, and now have been cut off, losing their places in line to white people who speak English and aren’t all that oppressed? If people pleading for refugee status have to show a valid fear of persecution if they aren’t admitted here, then right now, Afrikaners shouldn’t rank high on the list. It is just coincidence but the news about Trump’s order that “admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa” came the same day as news about the worsening war in Sudan. In one Washington Post report about a particular city in Darfur, “A full-blown famine hit the communities trapped within and in nearby displacement camps. Locals subsisted off animal feed, weeds and peanut shells. The victorious militias, which are predominantly ethnically Arab, have gone on a shocking killing rampage of the local non-Arab population.” Leave a comment In what at least was our proud tradition as a sanctuary for people enduring the worst that life can throw at them, wouldn’t it seem that victims like these also ought to qualify for refugee status? The president of a refugee resettlement non-profit based in Baltimore called Global Refuge said, “This decision doesn’t just lower the refugee admissions ceiling. It lowers our moral standing.” As if it hadn’t already sunk low enough. Share Upgrade to paid Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame. You can learn more at GregDobbs.net |