It looks like your liberal neighbors will have to take down their “refugees welcome” signs now.
A small group of South African refugees arrived in the United States on Monday bearing American flags.
In February, @POTUS signed an EO that Afrikaners fleeing persecution had a place in the United States.
Today, I joined @DeputySecState in fulfilling that promise and welcomed 23 Afrikaner families to the United States. pic.twitter.com/pqNiSznVeF— Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar (@DepSec_Edgar) May 13, 2025
They came to the U.S. after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February designating them as in need of asylum.
One would think the Left would be happy about this. After all, Democrats are allegedly the party of refugees. All are welcome, right? Wrong.
Left-wing media commentators and Democrat politicians are apoplectic.
What’s going on here? I think it’s obvious, but let’s start with an important note: It’s not like Trump is letting in millions, or hundreds of thousands, or even hundreds of asylum-seekers, for that matter. According to reports, the administration has brought in 59 people. That’s not even enough Afrikaners to fill a trans-Atlantic flight to the U.S.
More unvetted, bogus “asylum-seekers” than that were let in every few minutes on some days under President Joe Biden.
So, this is hardly something to get worked up about. But they are worked up. Very worked up. In fact, some organizations seem to be willing to light their “pro-refugee” work on fire to avoid getting involved.
The Episcopal Church announced Monday that it would end its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing the church’s long-term “commitment to racial justice and reconciliation.” It is ultimately turning down millions of dollars.
The reason the Left doesn’t like the Afrikaners is clear. These refugees are white, as my colleague Tony Kinnett rightly said on his show “The Tony Kinnett Cast” on Monday night.
Here’s former Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., confirming the suspicion:
“In my view, what makes it different is that they are white South Africans. The president, in my view, has not hidden his racism behind a bushel,” she said on MSNBC.
DISGUSTING: MSNBC “political analyst” Donna Edwards accuses President Trump of “racism” for granting refugee status to Afrikaners — who are victims of genocide in South Africa. pic.twitter.com/cGGkaiDsim— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 12, 2025
MSNBC is really concerned about bringing in these five dozen people.
MSNBC: “The Trump administration is saying that essentially these White South Africans assimilate better & they’re also not as much of a security risk. That’s causing a lot of people to be appalled.”
¯_(?)_/¯pic.twitter.com/egfykuRCeE— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) May 12, 2025
Here’s Ashley Allison, the former national coalitions director for the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign, who said on CNN that if the Afrikaners don’t want to be in South Africa, they can “leave”:
Biden-Harris senior staffer supports taking land away from white South Africans who could “go back to Germany!!” (not USA) pic.twitter.com/IIgYI1SdME— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 13, 2025
When conservative commentator Scott Jennings responded that that’s what they are in fact doing, she said that they can “go back to Germany.”
The Afrikaners are mostly descendants of Dutch arrivals who began arriving at the Cape of Good Hope Colony in 1652. That’s before the ancestors of even many of the current black residents of the country today.
Regardless, why should they go to Holland or Germany or some other vague and distant place of “origin” after four centuries? That’s an extreme form of blood and soil nationalism from any perspective.
Here’s the best one of all, from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who is so pro-refugee that he went down to El Salvador to do a photo-op with a Salvadoran deported back to his home country who is credibly accused of being an MS-13 member, a human trafficker, and a wife beater, but who the senator insists must be returned to the United States.
“Trump and [Elon] Musk are about to give refugee status to 60 white South Africans—who do not need it—while Trump locks up and deports refugees here who face genuine dangers in other countries,” Van Hollen wrote on X. “This is the sick global apartheid policy being adopted by this lawless administration.”
To the contrary, it seems clear that at least some of those Afrikaners, who are mostly engaged in farming, do need protection.
There have been hundreds of attacks on, and dozens of killings of, Afrikaners in recent years. South Africa is a dangerous country in general, but it seems like many of these incidents have been racially motivated acts of black-on-white violence.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk, who originally hails from South Africa, certainly thinks so. Here’s what he said on X in March.
Very few people know that there is a major political party in South Africa that is actively promoting white genocide.
The video below was just yesterday. A whole arena chanting about killing white people.
A month ago, the South African government passed a law legalizing… https://t.co/GHYp6DvGkr— gorklon rust (@elonmusk) March 22, 2025
The South African government has frequently threatened to outright confiscate land from white landowners to give it to blacks as a form of “reparations.”
In case you think that the threats are idle, just read this ominous statement from the African National Congress, the ruling party in South Africa. It insists there are “no Afrikaner refugees in South Africa.”
AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS REJECTS FALSEHOOD OF “AFRIKANER REFUGEES”
The African National Congress registers its firm rejection of the United States government’s decision to grant refugee status to 49 individuals self-identifying as Afrikaners.
Let it be categorically stated:… pic.twitter.com/d7Y385Cmlp— ANCLimpopo (@ANCLimpopo) May 13, 2025
If there is no problem, why not just let these people go?
“What the instigators of this falsehood seek is not safety, but impunity from transformation. They flee not from persecution, but from justice, equality, and accountability for historic privilege,” the message says. Media inquiries are directed to—I kid you not—someone named Mangaliso “Stalin” Khonza.
In case it wasn’t clear, South Africa is run by people who read George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and thought it had some neat ideas for running a country. They don’t want the Afrikaners to leave and possibly make a new life for themselves elsewhere. They want to sponge off them and use them as props to stay in power.
There is clearly a pattern for why the Left wants to reject the Afrikaner refugees. The latter are supposedly descendants of those guilty of the colonization and apartheid of their ancestors, the thinking goes, so we really shouldn’t have sympathy or help them.
Now they are blasting the airwaves with messages about how helping a few white farmers is actually racist.
It’s quite a revealing self-own. The Left could have just let this go and said they want to bring in more refugees. They could have said nothing. Instead, they are clearly saying the quiet part out loud. For asylum, whites need not apply.