The charter plane carrying 59 white South Africans made international headlines when it landed near Washington on Monday.
The new arrivals at Dulles International Airport were not people on vacation. Instead, they were the first Africans, minorities derived from European settlers, and were recognized by the United States as refugees.
South African adults and children welcomed by Trump administration officials were quickly handed over a small US flag as a welcome to the adoption country.
Their entries are particularly controversial as they come when resettlement of all other refugees through US refugee enrollment programs is suspended indefinitely.
On his first day in office on January 20th, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to suspend the program. A few weeks later, an exception was made to an African who said the White House was suffering from racism at home.
The move follows claims by Trump adviser Elon Musk, born and raised in South Africa. White farmers face South African genocide and land expropriation.
The South African government has strongly denied the Trump administration’s accusations, as have been the case with some prominent Africans themselves.
Euronows reached out to several major Africanor groups in South Africa but received no response.
“If the US doesn’t take refugees, why should we?”
Lauren Landau, a professor of immigration and development at Oxford University, said the optics for resettlement for Africans are hard to see.
“It sends a very clear message to the world and to the American citizens. American citizens are welcoming other groups of people who have historically been linked to white hegemony and elitism, despite the US seeking to deport millions of people of color (people of color).”
Landau said vulnerable people, such as those fleeing Sudan’s brutal civil war, need resettlement much more.
“All of these people qualify as refugees than Africans. Africans may face some degree of opposition discrimination, perhaps even in politics, but they don’t have to fear their lives or their livelihoods because of who they are,” Landau said.
The Oxford professor added that the knock-on effect of US refugee policy, which he described as “a big slap in the face of humanitarianism and humanitarianism,” could be important.
“Every country in the world opens a space where we say, “If we’re the richest country in the world, why not take real refugees?” ”
Trump’s “transactional thinking”?
Until Trump’s executive order in January, the United States was the world’s leading resettlement country, usually giving asylum to tens of thousands of refugees each year.
In total, there are around 38 million refugees worldwide, according to Bill Freric, director of the Human Rights Watch (HRW) Refugees and Immigration Rights Division.
Freric said only the number of the vulnerable groups had been resettled in third countries.
“The accepted numbers are now even smaller as the US was the main resettlement country,” he added. “So, perhaps only a small percentage of 1% of the world’s refugees have resettled.”
Like Landau, Freric said the US president’s acceptance of Africans and rejection of other groups was driven by political factors.
“I think Trump’s idea is a deal and driven by other foreign policy considerations. There are other criticisms he made in South Africa,” Freric noted.
Trump’s criticism includes attacking South Africa for filing a UN court case against Israel over the war with Hamas in Gaza.
Limbo’s refugees
Regardless of Trump’s motivation, applications for African refugees were promoted.
“I cannot speak to individual African cases, but the admissions program for US refugees decades ago has specific requirements that individuals must meet,” says Mevlü de Akay Alp, a senior litigation lawyer at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP).
“Historically, this process involves critical vetting and screening. It usually takes years for refugees to be recognized by the United States. In stark contrast to the entry of dozens of Africans this week, they were quickly followed in a few months.”
Meanwhile, the thousands of refugees who were approved and booked in the US as of January 20th are unsure of their future. There are court orders in place, but the Trump administration is requiring them to allow entry.
“These people are now left behind in Limbo in third countries. By definition, they face extreme violence and persecution,” Akay Alp said.
“They took important steps and relied on the fact that they would travel to the US soon. Many of them sold their belongings, finished leasing their homes, left their jobs in the hopes of traveling…and they don’t know if they’ll be able to come to the US now.”
Akay Alp said the group includes people who risked their lives saving US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The litigation lawyer also spoke about one of the IRAP plaintiffs in a case that challenged the suspension of the Trump administration’s US refugee hospitalization program.
After fleeing the war in Congo at the age of 13, Pacito was scheduled to fly to the United States two days after the refugee ban was declared. But despite multiple court orders in recent months, he is still waiting in Kenya.
“We’re dealing with the real lives of people here,” Akay Alp said.
