Far fewer refugees will be allowed into the United States in the coming year, and most of those admitted will be white South Africans who President Donald Trump says face “unjust” racial discrimination in their country.
The Trump administration will limit refugee admissions to 7,500 in fiscal year 2026, it announced Thursday in a notice published in the Federal Register, a dramatic drop from the 125,000 figure set last year under President Joe Biden.
Admissions will also be “primarily distributed among South African Afrikaners,” the notice said, as well as other victims of “unlawful or unfair discrimination in their respective countries of origin.” It references an executive order issued in February, in which Trump condemned South Africa for what he described as “countless” policies restricting Afrikaners’ opportunities and fueling “disproportionate violence against racially disadvantaged landowners.” Afrikaners, descendants of mainly Dutch settlers who arrived in South Africa in the 1600s, ruled the country from 1948 to 1994 and imposed racial separation laws known as apartheid.
South African officials have strongly disputed claims that Afrikaners were victims of racial persecution.
“There are sufficient structures available in South Africa to address issues of discrimination. Furthermore, even if there are allegations of discrimination, we believe that they do not meet the threshold of persecution required by domestic and international refugee law,” South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation said in a statement earlier this year, saying that U.S. efforts to resettle South Africans as refugees appeared “entirely politically motivated and intended to challenge democracy Constitution of South Africa.
The Trump administration said in its statement that significantly reducing the overall number of refugee admissions is “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”
