The United States has announced it will increase the number of white South Africans admitted as refugees this year from approximately 7,500 to 17,500, citing unforeseen developments that have created an emergency refugee situation. The cost of resettling the additional 10,000 people is estimated at $100 million (£75 million), according to a notice sent to Congress by the State Department.
President Donald Trump, since starting his second term, has repeatedly made false claims that white Afrikaners face racial targeting and a so-called “white genocide”. The South African government has strongly rebutted these allegations. The US administration has also cut aid to South Africa, boycotted the G20 summit in Johannesburg last year, and disinvited South Africa from this year’s G20, to be held at one of Trump’s resorts in Miami.
The US began admitting white South Africans as refugees in May 2025, while suspending the refugee settlement programme for people fleeing war and persecution in countries including Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan. In the 2024 fiscal year, the US admitted more than 100,000 refugees overall.
The State Department notice argued that the South African government’s rhetoric has sought to undermine the US resettlement programme and attacked Afrikaners. It also cited a December raid of a US refugee processing centre in South Africa, which the US deemed “unacceptable”. South Africa defended the action, stating it had deported seven Kenyans working illegally in the country.
“This escalating hostility heightens the risks to Afrikaners in South Africa, who are already subject to far-reaching government-sponsored race-based discrimination,” the notice said. Afrikaners, descended from Dutch and French settlers, ruled during apartheid, repressing the black majority. Post-apartheid affirmative action policies have helped create a black elite, but South Africa remains deeply unequal, with 12% of white South Africans unemployed compared to 48% of black South Africans.
