The Trump Administration recently announced a coverage chopping US refugee admissions to a record-low of 7500 over the subsequent yr, whereas looking for to allocate these slots “primarily” be to Afrikaner South Africans and “different victims of unlawful or unjust discrimination of their respective homelands.” Given the administration’s actions to this point (admitting Afrikaners while seeking to bar virtually all other refugees), it’s apparent few or no “different victims” are going to be admitted underneath the brand new coverage. There isn’t a remotely defensible justification for this coverage, which is only a type of blatant racial and ethnic discrimination.
As defined in my previous post on this subject, I’m not against admitting Afrikaners, and there may be even a believable case they’re legally eligible for refugee standing, based mostly on the South African authorities’s discriminatory insurance policies (which embody numerous types of affirmative motion favoring Blacks as a method to compensate for the injustices of apartheid). However the concept white South Africans have a stronger declare to refugee standing than nearly each different group on the planet is totally absurd. Around the globe, quite a few racial, ethnic, and spiritual minorities, and victims of political persecution face vastly extra extreme discrimination and oppression.
There isn’t a different good motive to privilege Afrikaners, both. In my earlier post, I criticized the concept all or most white South Africans are inveterate racists, inimical to American liberal democratic values. That stereotype is simplistic and dated. However it’s additionally fallacious to make the other assumption, that they’re by some means extra attuned to these values than different would-immigrants and refugees. There isn’t a foundation for that assumption, both.
The identical goes for claims that white South Africans can assimilate higher based mostly on language and tradition. There are a lot of potential English-speaking refugees who may just do as properly, most clearly English-speaking Black Africans fleeing oppressive governments. And, as mentioned in Chapter 6 of my e book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, social science proof signifies that immigrants from non-English talking nations usually study the language shortly, and in any other case assimilate efficiently. In sum, there isn’t any motive to assume that Afrikaners are a greater match for America than different refugees, until being American is by some means synonymous with being white.
Conservatives who favor color-blindness in authorities coverage in different conditions (as I do) would do properly to sentence Trump’s coverage right here. In any other case, it certain looks like their help for color-blindness is restricted to conditions the place whites are those deprived.
In nearly some other space of presidency coverage, blatant racial or ethnic discrimination like this may be struck down by the courts. Sadly, Supreme Courtroom precedents like Trump v. Hawaii have created a double commonplace underneath which the federal government can get away with discriminatory insurance policies within the immigration discipline, that will not be permitted elsewhere.
I have argued this double standard is indefensible, and the Supreme Courtroom ought to reverse precedents suggesting in any other case. That won’t occur anytime quickly. However, even when this type of racial discrimination in refugee coverage is authorized underneath present (badly misguided) precedent, that does not make it proper.
Trump’s extension of refugee standing to Afrikaners would possibly, I have suggested, set a precedent for increasing it to a variety of different teams, one that may be successfully exploited by a future, extra pro-immigrant, administration. Maybe it’d sometime lead the federal authorities to rethink the present unduly narrow legal definition of “refugee,” which excludes victims of many forms of extreme oppression. Trump and his minions certainly do not intend any such results. However unintended results typically happen with authorities insurance policies.
Regardless, Trump’s coverage of favoring white South Africans whereas barring nearly all different refugees, is totally reprehensible. If you happen to help color-blindness and abhor racial and ethnic discrimination in different contexts, you must condemn it right here, too.
