Is Trump using Immigration to make America White again?

Trump grants asylum to South Africa’s White Afrikaners

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On February 7th, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.” This was in response to South Africa enacting an appropriation act that would seize White-owned property. Trump’s executive order entails placing sanctions on South Africa, cutting their foreign aid, and most notably, admitting White Afrikaner South Africans as refugees to the United States.

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Trump’s Executive Order on South Africa

There was a query of 20k asylum requests just several days after Trump made the announcement, which crashed the South African Chamber of Commerce in the United States’ server. There were even reports that requests were as high as 50k a few days later. This includes 10k requests in just 18 hours, as well as 10k White farmers who are looking to flee. 11k temporary South African agricultural workers under the US’s H-2A visa program are now eligible for permanent immigration status.

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Trump granting asylum to White Afrikaners shows a radical political shift, as during Trump’s first term, any blatantly pro-White immigration policy would have been way outside the Overton Window of acceptable policy. However, Trump said during his first term that he wanted immigrants from countries like Norway and not from shithole countries like Haiti, though he never followed through on this on policy. The US granting asylum to White South Africans has long been a fringe White Nationalist issue that no GOP politician would even consider. For instance, back in 2003, soft White Nationalist Jared Taylor said, “The one group of refugees I would let in is Whites from Africa.”

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The UK and the Netherlands won’t even grant the right of return to their colonial diasporas in South Africa, which I don’t think is that radical of a position. For instance, Social Democratic Germany and France granted the right of return to their diasporas, the Volga Germans from Russia and the Pied Noir from Algeria, respectively. It is also notable that the refugee status granted by Trump’s executive order only applies to Afrikaners and not other White South Africans, such as those of English extraction.

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What is ironic is that Trump has been a major disappointment to immigration hardliners. For instance, Trump praised H1b visas, plans to hand out “gold card” visas to any foreign oligarch in exchange for $5 million in cash, and is deporting fewer illegal immigrants than Biden did last year. However, Trump scraped temporary protected status for millions of migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti. Regardless, immigration policy blatantly favoring White immigrants is more radically outside the Overton Window than reducing immigration.

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The narrative about the divide on immigration within the GOP is often framed as anti-immigration, pro-White nativists vs. more pro-immigration Republicans, such as business interests. While this divide showed up in the MAGA civil war over H1b visas, it is a bit more nuanced regarding South Africa. For instance, Steve Bannon is anti-immigration across the board, including for White South Africans, whom he called “the most racist people on Earth,” while demanding more high paying jobs for US born Blacks and Latinos. In contrast, Elon Musk, who likely had some role in influencing Trump’s executive order, is also strongly in favor of Indian H1b immigration.

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However, during Trump’s first term, before Musk supported him, the South African Afrikaner advocacy group, AfriForum, came to America to curry favor with Trump. Also, John Bolton alleged that Trump wanted to fast track White South Africans as refugees. A lot of leftist and Third Worldist types allege that Trump has ulterior geopolitical motives in targeting South Africa, such as undermining BRICS and punishing South Africa for their UN resolution to condemn Israel for committing genocide. However, even if there is some truth to this, South Africa’s post-Apartheid ANC regime has long been a staunch Chinese ally and anti-Zionist, yet was also a sacred cow for America’s civil rights regime.

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A lot of usually super pro-immigration lefties are outraged about Trump granting asylum to White South Africans. For instance, an article by Amari Apple in the Black entertainment media outlet Rolling Out called granting asylum to White South Africans harmful by politicizing the asylum process, which should be “based on immediate danger rather than racial or ethnic background.” This ironically mimics what rightwingers have been saying about Replacement Theory. While those eligible to claim asylum under US law are any ethnic group targeted specifically for persecution, US refugee law has always been very politicized. In my article, Xenophobia is Woke Now? from three years ago, I reference a New York Times article by Miriam Jordan, who is very pro-immigration, and was outraged about White South Africans on H-2A visas displacing Black farmworkers in the Mississippi Delta.

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Somali born congresswoman, Ilhan Omar told the HuffPost “I think making our refugee resettlement system into one that is discriminatory obviously is problematic. It’s currently halted, and he (Trump) wants to make an exception only for white people — that just is plainly wrong and ridiculous.” Omar also suggested that Musk had a hand in this policy. Foundational Black Americans/ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) are especially outraged. However, to be fair, FBA/ADOS are not aligned with the Left and are broadly anti-immigrant, including against Black immigrants like Nigerians.

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Leftists are pushing this conspiracy theory that the rightwing of Silicon Valley, aka “the PayPal Mafia”, is a pro-Apartheid South African cabal. This is because of Trump’s South African born mega donors Elon Musk and David Sacks, as well as less known Roelof Botha, who is a venture capitalist and grandson of Pik Botha, the last foreign minister of Apartheid South Africa. These leftists also tie in Peter Thiel, who is German but grew up in South Africa. They are also making a big deal that USAID, which Musk is dismantling, played a significant role in the anti-Apartheid movement.

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Woke leftists and Black ethno-narcissists are pushing this narrative that White South Africans can’t be oppressed because they own a vastly disproportionate amount of South Africa’s wealth and land. However, this is often the case with market dominant minorities being much wealthier than the majority population while also being targets of persecution. For instance, the Jewish diaspora, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Chinese in South East Asia, Indians in East Africa, and even the White Spanish elite who fled Communist Cuba. Jimmy Carter granted asylum to Iranian Jews fleeing the Islamic Revolution, and they ended up buying up much of Beverly Hills.

While it is insane how the pro-immigration Left is making a huge deal out of this, I don’t think it is entirely because they hate White immigrants. For instance, Democrats welcomed Ukrainian refugees fleeing evil Putler. Sure, liberals like to claim hypocrisy in that refugee admissions plunged during Trump’s first term, with the greatest drops among Africa, the Middle East, and South East. However, the key issue with Trump granting asylum to White Afrikaners is that it flips the script on the White oppressor/Black victimhood narrative, which is core to the Left’s ideology and also explains why a lot of Black people are unhappy about this.

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There are reports of Afrikaners in South Africa turning down Trump’s offer to grant them asylum. For instance, Dirk Hermann, chief executive of the Afrikaner trade union Solidarity, which it claims represents around 2 million people, said, “Our members work here, and want to stay here, and they are going to stay here. We are committed to build a future here. We are not going anywhere.” If Afrikaners were to emigrate, they would lose their distinct culture, and their descendants would become deracinated American suburbanites who might have a braai once or twice a year, comparable to how deracinated Irish Americans celebrate their heritage by getting drunk on St. Patrick’s Day.

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There are also videos and posts from more liberal White South Africans dismissing that Whites are in danger and in need of asylum, though obviously more biased liberal media outlets are going to amplify these voices. While a lot of White South Africans support Trump addressing their plight, others feel like he is using them as pawns for America’s culture wars and political battles. There are also concerns that Trump antagonizing South Africa could backfire and lead to White South Africans being further scapegoated and demonized, especially if Trump’s sanctions crash their economy.

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Despite White people facing racial discrimination and the high rates of violent crime in South Africa, American rightwingers probably overestimate how desperate White South Africans are to leave. Since South African real estate and labor is so cheap, many White people own large estates with lots of servants but could not afford to replicate that lifestyle if they were to emigrate. Afrikaners have good private schools that offer much more reasonable rates than comparable private schools in America. Despite anti-White discrimination, White South Africans benefit from being the smarter faction, alongside the small Indian minority, among a low-IQ nation. If they emigrated, they would have to compete with millions of White Americans and smart Asian immigrants.

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Regardless, the number of asylum requests from South Africa shows that the US can attract White immigrants if America actively seeks them out. However, White South Africans (4.5 million with 2.7 million Afrikaners) alone are too small of a group to have that dramatic of a demographic impact. In contrast, Ukrainians have a much larger population, with 33 million people today and about 42 million before the war. Ukrainians were the only significant new White immigrant group to come to America in quite some time. However, Trump suspended the refugee program for Ukrainians, as being pro-Ukraine is coded as blue tribe, and Trump is likely punishing Ukrainians for being allied with the Biden administration. This is a pivot from Trump’s first term, where refugee admissions for Ukrainians increased by 109%, which was before the war.

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Beyond the South Africa issue, I am skeptical of the GOP using White immigration as a demographic hedge against America becoming majority non-White. Trump and the GOP are much more likely to push for high skilled immigration more broadly. Not to mention that Trump only has one term, and the next president will likely be a Democrat who will shut down any kind of pro-White immigration policy. While I get the argument that we don’t need any immigrants until all Americans, regardless of race, are taken care of, White immigration is needed to offset native born White decline until native born White fertility is back to replacement level.

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If Trump prioritizes White South Africans over other refugee groups, or especially if he only grants them refugee status while scraping asylum for all other groups, his administration will appear blatantly pro-White rather than just anti-immigration. This is a break from the GOP’s obsession with colorblind civic nationalism and meritocracy. Not only is Trump putting the long ignored anti-White climate of South Africa front and center, but this also signals a willingness for the Right to play the identity politics game, which Democrats have successfully exploited. It is also one of the more interesting and out of the box things Trump has done.