To curb the number of refugees entering the US, the Trump administration will restrict the number of refugees to 7,500 a year and prioritize white South Africans.

The step is an abrupt reduction of the prior cap of 125,000, which was established by former President Joe Biden, announced in a notice issued on 30th OCtober, and will reduce the cap to a historic low.

The cut was not explained, but the notice indicated that it was necessitated by humanitarian considerations or otherwise was in the national interest.

In January, Trump issued an executive order to suspend the US Refugee Admissions Programme, or USRAP, which he claimed would permit US authorities to take national security and public safety into account.

The last cap of all-time refugee admissions occurred in 2020 under the first Trump administration, which allocated 15,000 to the fiscal year 2021.

The relevant notice on the site of the Federal Register stated that the 7,500 admissions would be distributed, primarily, to Afrikaner South Africans and other victims of illegal or unfair discrimination in their native countries.

The president of the US suspended critical aid to South Africa in February and offered to accommodate Afrikaner members of the community, who are primarily white descendants of early Dutch and French settlers in the US, as refugees.

The ambassador of South Africa to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was also expelled when he accused Trump of organising a supremacism and attempted to create a dog whistle of white victimhood.

Trump took on South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in May in the Oval Office and alleged that his country was killing and persecuting white farmers.

They also played a video at the white house that they claimed contained burial sites of murdered white farmers. The videos were subsequently found to be clips of a protest in 2020, where the crosses were symbols of farmers who had been murdered over several years.

The strained visit was only a few days following the US giving a haven to 60 Afrikaners.

The South African government has strongly protested against the fact that the Afrikaners and other white South Africans are being persecuted.

On his inauguration day, 20 January, Trump announced the suspension of USRAP as a result of the US being unable to accept large numbers of migrants, and refugees in particular, into its communities without negatively affecting the resources available to Americans, and that it would protect their safety and security.

The US policy of accepting the white South Africans has already been accused of unfair treatment by the refugee advocacy groups.

Others have claimed the US is practically closed to other oppressed groups or individuals who may suffer in their own country, or even allies who assisted the US in Afghanistan or the Middle East.

“This action,” according to Global Refuge CEO and president Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, “does not merely reduce the refusal threshold of refugees,” as he said on Thursday. “It lowers our moral standing.”

In a crisis situation in nations such as Afghanistan, Venezuela, Sudan, and others, she said this would make the one focusing on the vast majority of the admissions at the expense of the other groups, invalidate both the intent of the programme and its own credibility.

Refugees International also criticized the act, claiming that the act is a mockery of the protection of refugees and American values.

In its statement, Refugees International said, “Whatever misfortunes the Afrikaners might be going through, these people have no legitimate claim to be labeled as refugees because they are not evading systematic persecution.”

The government of South Africa has not yet reacted to the new announcement.

In the Oval Office meeting, President Ramaphosa mentioned only that he hoped Trump officials would hear South Africans regarding the matter, and subsequently stated that he felt doubt and disbelief about all this in the head of Trump.

At the beginning of this year, Ramaphosa signed a controversial law that would permit the government to take over the privately-owned land without compensation under some conditions.

Although the nation does not publish race-based crime figures, previous figures released earlier this year indicated that 7,000 individuals were killed in South Africa in October and December 2024.

Among them, 12 were slain during farm attacks, and only one of the 12 was a farmer. Five of them were farm dwellers, and four were employees who may have been black.