Date: 05/09/2025
Source: New York Times
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/world/africa/trump-afrikaner-refugees.html
Source: United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR)
URL: https://www.unrefugees.org/refugee-facts/what-is-a-refugee/
Detail:
From UNHCR:
A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries.
From New York Times:
Trump Officials Seek to Bring First White Afrikaners to U.S. as Refugees Next Week
A top State Department official told South African officials on Friday that the United States planned to transport 54 Afrikaners to the United States on a charter flight scheduled to leave Johannesburg on Sunday, according to a person briefed on the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the private conversation.
The arrival of the Afrikaners would cement Mr. Trump’s efforts to upend a program that for decades has allowed thousands of people fleeing war, famine and natural disaster to find safe haven in the United States.
South African government officials have vigorously disputed the claim by the United States that Afrikaners qualify for refugee status and conveyed those doubts in a diplomatic memo sent to the State Department this week, they said.
“It is most regrettable that it appears that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy,” the spokesman, Chrispin Phiri, said in a statement.
He added that Afrikaners’ claims of discrimination “do not meet the threshold of persecution required under domestic and international refugee law.”