The Trump administration will limit the number of refugees admitted to the US to 7,500 over the next year, and give priority to white South Africans.The move, announced in a notice published on Thursday, marks a dramatic cut from the previous limit of 125,000 set by former President Joe Biden and will bring the cap to a record low.No reason was given for the cut, but the notice said it was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest”.In January, Trump signed an executive order suspending the US Refugee Admissions Programme, or USRAP, which he said would allow US authorities to prioritise national security and public safety. The previous lowest refugee admissions cap was set by the first Trump administration in 2020, when it allocated 15,000 spots for fiscal year 2021.The notice posted to the website of the Federal Register said the 7,500 admissions would “primarily” be allocated to Afrikaner South Africans and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands”.In February, the US president announced the suspension of critical aid to South Africa and offered to allow members of the Afrikaner community – who are mostly white descendants of early Dutch and French settlers – to settle in the US as refugees.South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was later expelled after accusing Trump of “mobilising a supremacism” and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle”.In the Oval Office in May, Trump confronted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and claimed white farmers in his nation were being killed and “persecuted”.The White House also played a video which they said showed burial sites for murdered white farmers. It later emerged that the videos were scenes from a 2020 protest in which the crosses represented far …
