A group of White South Africans will arrive in Washington, DC, on Monday through a state department plane to reap in the United States as refugees, said a source familiar with its arrival at NBC News.
His resettlement occurs despite President Donald Trump suspended the State Department’s refugee admission program through an executive order on the first day of his second mandate.
The programmed arrival of the group as the first White South Africans to enter the United States as refugees was first informed by the New York Times on Friday.
Trump signed an order on January 20 that said that the United States “lacks the ability to absorb a large number of migrants and, in particular, refugees, to their communities in a way that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, which protects their safety, and that guarantees the appropriate assimilation of refugees.”
But after a public dispute with the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a few weeks later, for his signature of a law of land attacks, Trump issued a second executive order that eliminates aid for South Africa and grants an exception for “Afrikaner refugees that escape the breed sponsored by the Government, the discrimination of racially discriminatory property.” Laws “, accusing his government of not stopping what he has referred to as a” genocide “against white farmers.
The South African government expressed concern to the Trump administration regarding the refugee status granted to its citizens in a Friday phone call between the South African Vice Minister Alvin Botos and the Secretary of State of the United States, Christopher Landau.
According to a South African reading of the call, boats played the position of the Trump administration that White South Africans are refugees, and added that “accusations of discrimination are unfounded.”
Under the 1951 refugee convention and its 1967 protocol, a refugee is defined as someone with a “well -founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comments on how the White South Africans fit into the definition of the Convention, or why this group received priority over the requests of other groups fleeing the persecution in countries such as Sudan, the Republic of Congo or Myanmar.
Chrispin Phiri, spokesman for the Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa, said in a statement on Friday: “It is very unfortunate that it seems that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the pretext of being” refugees “is completely politically motivated and is designed to question the constitutional democracy of South Africa; a country that has had a real persecution under the rule South Africa and has worked at such a level to which he has worked at such a level at level levels, and has worked at the level.
On Friday, the Cabinet Deputy Director of the White House and National Security Advisor Stephen Miller defended the resettlement of Afrikaners, even when refugees from other countries were prohibited from the United States
“What is happening in South Africa conforms to the definition of the textbook of why the refugee program was created,” said Miller. “This is a breed -based persecution. The refugee program does not intend to be a solution for world poverty, and historically, it has been used in that way.”
Shawn Vandiver, the president of Afghanevac, a coalition based in San Diego that helps Afghas evacuate and reset in the United States, said the Trump administration does not come to “select victims that deserve security.”
“If Stephen Miller suddenly supports the resettlement of refugees when he adapts to a political narrative, well, but we do not pretend that the Afghan allies do not comply with the same legal definition,” Vandiver told NBC News. “Race -based persecution is real in many places, but so is religious, political and gender violence. That is exactly what Afghans are fleeing.”
Raquel Coronell Uribe contributed.
