#afrikaners

[pickonegirlblog]

[saywhat-politics]

Trump administration raises US refugee cap, but only for white South Africans

President Trump has announced that the U.S. is admitting 10,000 additional white South Africans as refugees, citing persecution in their hom

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will admit an additional 10,000 white South Africans into the U.S. as refugees this year, increasing its historically low annual cap but still blocking people from other countries from entering through the program.

Trump suspended the refugee program 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 U.S. Advocates say the decision to focus a decades-old program 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 Tuesday announcement 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.

[tearsofrefugees]

Trump charged taxpayers $400k to fly white South Africans to the US

Last May, a nearly empty flight organized by the Trump administration took a few dozen Afrikaners to the U.S. with taxpayer funds

[justinspoliticalcorner]

(RNS) — 'In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church o

Jack Jenkins at RNS:

(RNS) — In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church, the denomination announced on Monday (May 12) that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Donald Trump’s administration. In a letter sent to members of the church, the Most Rev. Sean W. Rowe — the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church — said that two weeks ago the government “informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees.” The request, Rowe said, crossed a moral line for the Episcopal Church, which is part of the global Anglican Communion that boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a celebrated and vocal opponent of apartheid in South Africa. “In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step,” Rowe wrote. “Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.” Rowe stressed that while Episcopal Migration Ministries will seek to “wind down all federally funded services by the end of the federal fiscal year in September,” the denomination will continue to support immigrants and refugees in other ways, such as offering aid to refugees who have already been resettled. The announcement came just as flights with Afrikaners were scheduled to arrive at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C., the first batch of entries after Trump declared via a February executive order that the U.S. would take in “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.” The South African government has stridently denied allegations of systemic racial animus, as has a coalition of white religious leaders in the region that includes many Anglicans. [...] Rowe noted his announcement comes as the Trump administration has otherwise all but frozen the refugee program, with Afrikaners among the few — and possibly only — people granted entry as refugees since January. Shortly after he was sworn in, Trump signed an executive order that essentially halted the refugee program and stopped payments to organizations that assist with refugee resettlement — including, according to one group, payments for work already performed. That change has left refugees — including Christians fleeing religious persecution — without a clear path forward and forced the 10 refugee resettlement groups, seven of which are faith-based, to lay off scores of workers while still trying to support refugees who had recently arrived. Four of the faith groups have since filed two separate lawsuits, one of which recently resulted in a ruling that should have restarted the program. However, refugee groups have accused the government of “delaying compliance” with the court order.

The Episcopal Church (TEC) has terminated an agreement with the federal government to assist in refugee resettlement over Donald Trump’s resettlement of White Afrikaner refugees from South Africa while otherwise shutting off refugee resettlement.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Trump is doing a terrific job pissing off religious groups

The Guardian: Episcopal church says it won’t help resettle white South Africans granted refugee status

[hyperboreandadsblog]

[onlytiktoks]

[arctic-hands]

U.S. plans to receive and aid White South Africans granted refugee status as soon as next week, document shows

The Trump administration is planning to soon receive the first group of White South Africans​ it says deserve a safe haven in the U.S.

The Trump administration is planning to soon receive the first group of White South Africans it says deserve a safe haven in the U.S. because of alleged racial discrimination in post-Apartheid South Africa, government documents obtained by CBS News show. The initial arrival of the South African nationals who have been granted refugee status could happen as early as next week, according to the documents, which describe the effort as a "stated priority" for the Trump administration.

This country is beyond parody

[maklodes]

Say Trump grants $15,000 a year incomes to a group of people who aren't exactly destitute. Maybe they're not billionaires, but like, some folks living in the suburbs. Some of them may have some credit card debt and trouble making mortgage payments after vacationing in Portugal or buying fancy pickup trucks or getting laid off, or may have to dissuade their kids from going to colleges that didn't offer scholarships, but on average they're doing okay.

Let's say you believe in universal basic income, which you think should be $15,000 per year or whatever. I think then you have to respond "the moderately-prosperous suburbanites should get $15,000 a year, and so should everyone else. I hope they enjoy their new income, but wish that we could extend those benefits to everyone, especially those much more needy."

On the other hand, say you don't believe in universal basic income. You believe that the government should be helping people in need, but not everyone. Then you can say, "look, I don't have personal animosity against the people benefiting from this handout, but they should not be receiving this."

Now, on the case of the Afrikaner refugees: if you more-or-less believe in open borders, then your position should be "the Afrikaners are welcome; I only wish Trump were equally welcoming to all the other people who wish to come to the USA."

However, some people believe that there should not be open borders, but that there should be a qualified, limited admission of refugees: that Sudanese people who just had their homes torched by the RSF can qualify as refugees, but random Ecuadorians who think that life kinda sucks in Ecuador and would rather live in the United States should not qualify as refugees. (At best, they may be allowed to immigrate on other grounds, but a lot of people who would like to immigrate are just out of luck.)

If that's your view, I don't think it's just a manifestation of some kind of malicious anti-Afrikaner antipathy to say "no, they should not have been admitted as refugees."

You could, of course, disagree with the limited immigration view as a matter of policy, and say "well you should be for open borders." Or you could see them as hypocrites if they actually are for open borders except in the case of Afrikaners.

Or, more frustratingly, you might run into someone who says "I'm not for open borders! Calling me an open borders advocate is disinformation and deception! Yet if there are people who are just coming here to make a better life for themselves and work hard, it just seems Unamerican to meet them with horrible militarized borders lined with concertina wire and armed ICE stormtroopers. Haven't you read the Emma Lazarus poem? Also, once they are past the border and are living here, isn't it cruel to then rip them away from their new homes?"

It's hard to say whether such a person is a hypocrite, because such views seem so protean, but I do think I would be comfortable saying that it's not a great look when someone is, in practice, pro-immigrant except for one particular group, even if they won't commit to unrestricted immigration in theory.

Still, I think that it's possible to say that some people are qualified to be refugees and some people are not, and that many Afrikaners, while living less-than-ideal lives that might be improved by immigration to the United States, are not.