President Trump is reportedly considering giving preferential treatment to white Christians from South Africa and Europe seeking to enter the U.S. as refugees. If he moves forward with policy change, it would be a blatantly racist attack on diversity.
The New York Times reported Oct. 15 that it had obtained documents detailing the possible change. The newspaper said a State Department spokesman refused to comment on the matter.
Trump suspended refugee admissions into the U.S. in January. But the president made an exception to his ban in May, allowing 59 white South Africans, whom he claimed are a persecuted minority in the majority-Black nation, to enter the U.S. as refugees.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has called reports of white persecution in his country “a completely false narrative.” The facts are on Ramaphosa’s side.
The limit on the number of refugees allowed to legally enter the U.S. was 125,000 in the last year of President Joe Biden’s administration. Trump has agreed to admit only a fraction of that — 7,500 people — as refugees in 2026.
If the reduction in overall refugee admissions is combined with new restrictions on non-white and non-Christian immigrants, Trump will prevent many legitimate refugees — such as courageous Afghan Muslims who risked their lives working for the U.S. during the war against the Taliban — from entering our country.
Trump has a long history of hostility toward non-white immigration. He has demonized unauthorized immigrants since announcing in 2015 that he was running for president.
“They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume are good people,” Trump said of unauthorized immigrants in 2015.
In his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said: “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out.” That program is now underway on a massive scale. Most immigrants in ICE detention as of last month had no criminal convictions in the U.S.
Trump appears nostalgic for the days of his youth, when America’s population was overwhelmingly white. In 1960, when Trump was 14, the Census Bureau said that nearly 89 percent of the U.S. population was non-Hispanic white, far higher than the nearly 58 percent in 2020. Trump seems to want to turn back the clock to make America white again.
Demographers project that by around 2045, less than half the U.S. population will be made up of non-Hispanic whites. This has horrified white supremacists and has spawned a baseless racist conspiracy theory called the Great Replacement Theory. The theory falsely claims Jews and others have organized an “invasion” of the U.S. by nonwhite immigrants to replace whites.
Trump has accused Democrats of orchestrating an invasion of illegal immigrants to vote for their party, take American jobs and commit crimes. He seems to see immigration — particularly of non-whites — as a cancer spreading through America, and he views diversity as something that endangers national unity.
Although the president claims his opponents are seeking to alter America’s racial makeup, he is the one pursuing that aim — but in favor of whites. He is projecting his ambition on Democrats.
Trump is a long-time opponent of policies promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. He has worked to end them by claiming they constitute racial discrimination against whites, turning civil rights laws enacted to protect Blacks and other minorities into a weapon to hold them back.
In truth, diversity, equity and inclusion programs don’t discriminate against anyone. They just create opportunities for the least, the lost and the left-out to make America even greater.
During his first term, The Washington Post reported that sources said Trump asked lawmakers at a meeting on immigration: “Why are we having all these people from sh–hole countries come here?” The sources said Trump was referring to majority-Black Haiti and Africa, along with El Salvador.
Trump reportedly wondered why America couldn’t attract more immigrants from nations like Norway, which has a population that is more than 90 percent white.
Trump seems to forget that, with the exception of Native Americans, everyone in this country is either an immigrant or a descendant of a diverse group of immigrants who came here in the last 500 years.
America is not a nation built on a common racial, ethnic or religious identity. America is built on ideals, including what the Pledge of Allegiance calls “liberty and justice for all.”
Rather than place tight limits on refugee admissions and favoring white Christian immigrants, our nation should embrace the beautiful sentiment of the poem carved on pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Refugees of every color and creed seeking to enter our golden door are not a curse. They are a blessing.
A. Scott Bolden is an attorney, NewsNation contributor, former chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party and a former New York state prosecutor.
