67,000 white South Africans have expressed interest in Trump’s plan to give them refugee status

The United States Embassy in South Africa said Thursday it received a list of nearly 70,000 people interested in refugee status in the U.S. under President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate members of a white minority group he claims are victims of racial discrimination by their Black-led government.

The list was given to the embassy by the South African Chamber of Commerce in the U.S., which said it became a point of contact for white South Africans asking about the program announced by the Trump administration last month. The chamber said the list does not constitute official applications.

Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 7 cutting U.S. funding to South Africa and citing “government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”

Trump’s executive order specifically referred to Afrikaners, a white minority group who are descendants of mainly Dutch and French colonial settlers who first came to South Africa in the 17th century. The order directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to prioritize humanitarian relief to Afrikaners who are victims of “unjust racial discrimination” and resettle them in the U.S. under the refugee program.

There are approximately 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa, which has a population of 62 million. Trump’s decision to offer some white South Africans refugee status went against his larger policy to halt the U.S. refugee resettlement program.

The South African government has said that Trump’s allegations that it is targeting Afrikaners through a land expropriation law are inaccurate and largely driven by misinformation. Trump has posted on his Truth Social platform that Afrikaners were having their farmland seized, when no land has been taken under the new law.

The executive order also criticized South Africa’s foreign policy, specifically its decision to accuse Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a case at the United Nations’ top court. The Trump administration has accused South Africa of supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran and taking an anti-American stance. The U.S. has also expelled the South African ambassador, accusing him of being anti-America and anti-Trump.

An official at the U.S. Embassy in the South African capital, Pretoria, confirmed receipt of the list of names from the South African Chamber of Commerce in the U.S. but gave no more detail.

Neil Diamond, the president of the chamber, said the list contains 67,042 names. Most were people between 25 and 45 years old and have children.

He told the Newzroom Afrika television channel that his organization had been inundated with requests for more information since Trump’s order and had contacted the State Department and the embassy in Pretoria “to indicate that we would like them to make a channel available for South Africans that would like to get more information and register for refugee status.”

“That cannot be the responsibility of the chamber,” he said.

Diamond said only U.S. authorities could officially register applications for resettlement in the U.S. The U.S. Embassy in South Africa said it is awaiting further instructions on the implementation of Trump’s order.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa