President Trump is setting the lowest-ever goal for U.S. refugee admissions, allowing a maximum of just 7,500 refugees while dictating that the majority of the slots should be given to white South Africans.
The figure is well below the 70,000 to 80,000 range used over the George W. Bush and Obama administrations and just a fraction of the 125,000 goal set under President Biden.
The 7,500 goal also falls short of the 11,814 refugees admitted during the final year of the first Trump administration, then an all-time low.
The U.S. refugee program traditionally welcomes those who are fleeing danger or persecution in their home country. The Sept. 30 designation from Trump, first published to the Federal Register Thursday, said the country should focus on those facing discrimination.
“The admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa pursuant to Executive Order 14204, and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands,” Trump wrote in the notice.
The Trump administration has already admitted some Afrikaners through the refugee program, and Trump has previously said the group faces “hateful rhetoric” and “disproportionate violence.”
However, advocates for refugees argue it’s a misuse of a program designed to provide refuge across the globe.
“This decision doesn’t just lower the refugee admissions ceiling. It lowers our moral standing,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Global Refuge, a refugee resettlement agency, said in a statement.
“For more than four decades, the U.S. refugee program has been a lifeline for families fleeing war, persecution, and repression. At a time of crisis in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Venezuela to Sudan and beyond, concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the program’s purpose as well as its credibility.”
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