Why Trump’s White Refugee Gambit Will Backfire The president is shutting the door to millions seeking refugee status—but reportedly seeking preferences for white South Africans, English speakers, and Europeans who oppose migration. He may be in for a surprise. by Paul Finkelman On October 31, President Donald Trump announced that in 2026, the United States will allow only 7,500 refugees to enter the country, marking the most drastic limitation on refugees since the United States adopted a formal refugee policy following World War II. Under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, the U.S. admitted over 350,000 refugees from 1948 to 1952. Modeled after the United Nations definition established in 1951, the federal definition of a refugee is someone who “is of special humanitarian concern to the United States,” and can demonstrate they “were persecuted or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.” In addition to slashing the number of refugees, the president declared he wants new policies that will favor Europeans (and people of European ancestry) and people who speak English. In a headline describing the new policy, The New York Times correctly declared that the new policy was to favor white people. This position dovetails with his 2024 campaign when he, asked a fundraising dinner, asked, ‘Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries. . . . Nice countries, you know, like Denmark, Switzerland? . . . How about Norway?”
One of Trump’s goals is to give refugee status to white South Africans who are uncomfortable living in a country where they are a racial minority and white Europeans who oppose the migration of non-Europeans into their countries. The proposal is racist and reflects a misunderstanding (at best) of who a refugee is. It does, however, reflect a policy that was created in the 1790s to protect slavery and discriminate against non-whites moving to the new United States. In 1790, the nation passed its first naturalization law. At one level, the law was remarkably progressive. It allowed people to naturalize regardless of religion, national origin, economic status, or gender. A woman could naturalize in the U.S. without “permission” from a husband, father, or other male family member. Jewish immigrants to the United States could naturalize under this law, but not if they moved to Great Britain or other European countries, which limited naturalization on religious grounds. But the statute was also racist, declaring that “any alien, being a free white person” could naturalize after residing in the United States for two years. The law did not prohibit non-white persons from entering the country, but it did prevent them from becoming citizens. Racial restrictions on naturalization would remain in American law until 1952. Beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the U.S. established a pattern of limiting immigration and naturalization based on race, ethnicity, and geographic origin. In 1924, Congress severely limited total immigration, preventing it entirely from some countries, such as Japan and China, and dramatically curbing it from southern, eastern, and central Europe. For more than a century, the U.S. has been a haven for those fleeing persecution, war, famine, and disaster. The Statue of Liberty still had on her pedestal the words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” However, the Immigration Act of 1924 closed the doors to America for most of those huddled masses. Despite the rise of fascism in Italy and Spain, Nazism in Germany, Japanese military aggression in Asia, and as murderous policies in the Soviet Union became evident, the U.S. kept its doors closed. As Benito Mussolini in Italy, Francisco Franco in Spain, and Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union increasingly arrested, harassed, murdered their opponents, or starved them to death, America looked the other way. Italian opponents of Mussolini could not come here, and many were killed. Ukrainians being starved to death by Stalin were not welcome here. Jews in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, trying to escape Adolf Hitler’s persecution before World War II began in September 1939, could not get into the United States, and soon perished. Millions of Eastern European Jews in Eastern Europe, denied U.S. entry, ended up in the gas chambers. After World War II, the United States finally adopted laws allowing refugees desperate to live to immigrate. After the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union failed in 1956, the United States allowed more than 30,000 Hungarian refugees to enter the country. When Fidel Castro took over Cuba in 1959, we offered sanctuary to refugees. After South Vietnam fell in 1975, the United States gave sanctuary to more than 1,250,000 refugees. In all these situations, refugees were desperate, often facing torture, imprisonment, or death at home, or living in camps as displaced persons. Since World War II, when the “status” of refugee became part of our law, millions have come here based on the threats they faced, without regard to their race, religion, ethnicity, or how much money they had in their pockets. President Trump’s proposal will reverse this history. He talks about white South Africans as escaping persecution. We can only wonder what he means. The situation of whites in a post-Apartheid South Africa doesn’t bear the signs of oppression. There is no government-sponsored violence against whites, who constitute about 7 percent of its population but own 73 percent of privately held land. In 2022-23, there were 51 people murdered on white South African farms (although all of them may not have been white). These killings account for less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the 27,494 people murdered in the country that year. These murders, while deplorable, hardly constitute an official or even unofficial campaign to murder, kill, or commit genocide against the four and a half million whites in South Africa. Meanwhile, white South Africans remain at the very top of the South African economy. Sixty-two percent of the top positions in South African companies are held by white managers, while only 17 percent are held by non-white managers. With wealth, access to education, and public office, white South Africans can apply for a visa or come here as ordinary immigrants if they want to. But they are not refugees under U.S. law, even if some have been victims of racial attacks. Similarly, the president says that Europeans who oppose migration in their own countries should be welcomed as refugees. He focuses on the far-right German AfD party. The government does not threaten parties that participate in German elections. Members can organize politically; no one is dragging them to prisons or gulags. They are not refugees. Why a president who has sought to put many of America’s top universities under de facto federal control over antisemitism should welcome non-persecuted members of an anti-immigrant party as refugees is perplexing. Calling “English-speaking” people refugees makes a mockery of U.S. immigration law and, ironically, the English language. Many people in Europe speak English because it is one of the two languages (the other is French) that the European Union uses to conduct most of its business. It is the official language and spoken by the majority of the population in Ireland and the United Kingdom, as well as in non-European countries such as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. But there are about 50 other nations in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America where English is an official language, taught in schools, and widely spoken, including the Bahamas, Belize, Fiji, Ghana, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Tonga, and Uganda. English is a de facto language in at least nine countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, including Bangladesh, Israel, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates. There are also more than 20 places, colonies, or territories, such as Bermuda, Hong Kong, and many islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, where English is an official language. If the president really wants to open our borders to people who speak English by pretending that they are “refugees,” it will be a broad spectrum of persons from around the globe of all races, religions, and ethnicities. The president should be careful what he wishes for; he might get it.
Read Online. Paul Finkelman, PhD, teaches at the University of Toledo College of Law and is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy, Emeritus, at Albany Law School. |