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A charter plane carrying 59 white South Africans made international headlines when it landed near Washington on Monday. 

The new arrivals at Dulles International Airport weren’t holidaymakers. Instead, they were the first Afrikaners, a minority descended from European colonists, to be admitted to the US as refugees. 

Greeted by senior officials from the Trump administration, the South African adults and children were promptly handed small US flags as a welcome to their adoptive country. 

Their entry is particularly contentious because it comes at a time when all other refugee resettlement through the US Refugee Admissions Program is indefinitely suspended. 

On his first day back in office on 20 January, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order that paused the programme. Just weeks later, an exception was made for Afrikaners, who the White House said were suffering racial discrimination at home. 

The move followed the claim by Trump adviser Elon Musk — who was born and raised in South Africa — that white farmers face genocide and land expropriation in South Africa. 

The South African government has strongly denied the Trump administration’s accusations, as have some prominent Afrikaners themselves. 

Euronews reached out to several major Afrikaner groups in South Africa, but did not receive a response. 

‘If the US won’t take refugees, why should we?’

Loren Landau, professor of migration and development at the University of Oxford, said the optics of the Afrikaners’ resettlement were plain to see. 

“It sends a very clear message to the world and to American citizens that, even as the US attempts to deport millions of (people of colour), the Trump administration will welcome a group of people from elsewhere who have historically been associated with white supremacy and elitism,” he said, with reference to South Africa’s Afrikaner-led apartheid regime, which lasted from 1948 until the early 1990s.

Landau said vulnerable people, such as those fleeing Sudan’s brutal civil war, are in much greater need of resettlement. 

 “All of these people qualify more as refugees — or should — than Afrikaners, who may face some level of anti-white discrimination on the streets, maybe even in politics, but by no means need to fear for their lives or livelihoods because of who they are,” Landau said. 

The Oxford professor added that the knock-on effects of US refugee policy, which he described as “a huge slap in the face for humanitarians and humanitarianism”, could be significant. 

“It opens space for every country in the world to say, ‘If the US, the world’s richest country, won’t take genuine refugees, why should we?’” 

Trump’s ‘transactional thinking’?

Until Trump’s executive order in January, the US was the leading resettlement country in the world, typically granting asylum to tens of thousands of refugees each year. 

In total, there are around 38 million refugees in the world, who have fled their countries and have a well-founded fear of persecution if they return, according to Bill Frelick, the director of Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Refugee and Migrant Rights Division. 

Only a small number of this vulnerable group used to receive third-country resettlement, Frelick said.

“The numbers accepted are now even smaller because the US was the major resettlement country,” he added. “And so what had maybe been maybe 1% of the world’s refugees being resettled is now going to be a fraction of that 1%.” 

Like Landau, Frelick said the US president’s acceptance of Afrikaners and rejection of other groups was driven by political factors.

“I think Trump’s thinking is transactional and is driven by other foreign policy considerations. There are other criticisms he’s made of South Africa,” Frelick noted. 

Trump’s criticisms include attacking South Africa for bringing a case in the top UN court against Israel over its war on Hamas in Gaza. 

Refugees in limbo

Regardless of Trump’s motives, the Afrikaners’ refugee applications were expedited. 

“I can’t speak to the Afrikaners’ individual cases, but the US refugees admissions programme, which is decades old, has specific requirements that individuals have to meet,” said Mevlüde Akay Alp, a senior litigation attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP).

“Historically, the process involves significant vetting and screening. It typically takes years for refugees to be admitted to the United States. What stands in stark contrast about the admission of dozens of Afrikaners this week is that they were fast-tracked in a matter of months.” 

Meanwhile, the thousands of refugees who were approved and had travel booked to the US as of 20 January remain unsure about their futures. Even though a court order is in place requiring the Trump administration to grant them entry. 

“Those people are now stranded in limbo in third countries. They, by definition, have faced extreme violence and persecution,” Akay Alp said. 

“They had taken significant steps and relied on the fact that they would be travelling very soon to the United States. Many of them sold their belongings, ended the leases on their homes, left their jobs in anticipation that they would be travelling … And they now have no idea whether they will ever be able to come to the US.” 

Akay Alp mentioned that this group included those who had risked their lives helping the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

The litigation attorney also spoke of one of IRAP’s plaintiffs in a case challenging the Trump administration’s suspension of the US Refugee Admissions Program. 

After fleeing war in the Congo at the age of 13, Pacito was scheduled to fly to the US 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 real people’s lives here,” said Akay Alp.