The same day dozens of South Africans arrived in the United States as refugees at the invitation of President Trump himself, his administration said thousands of Afghans could be deported from this summer.
Mr. Trump’s immigration policy is full of contradictions, the arrival of a charter jet paid by the U.S. government, which carries dozens of Afrikaans who say they face racial discrimination at home.
The Trump administration’s concern for white Afrikaans, a white minority ruled during apartheid, is particularly striking due to the effective ban on most other refugees and targeting legal and illegal immigration for deportation. These include Afghans who have obtained “temporary protection status” after the U.S. withdraws troops from Afghanistan in 2021, many of whom risk their lives to help the U.S. military.
Mr. Trump has been frustrated by the difficult route of immigration to help him return to the White House as voters on both sides expressed frustration at the issue. He promised the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, with one of the first executive orders in his second term being to suspend resettlement of refugees in the U.S.
However, the administration’s decision to make exceptions for white Afrikaans raises questions about who is whom Mr. Trump’s “rights” immigration is.
Secretary of State Christopher Landau greeted Dutch refugees on Monday, telling reporters that the group had been “scrutinized”.
“One of the criteria is that refugees do not pose any challenge to our national security and are easily absorbed into our country,” he said.
Mr. Landao was explained by reporters that even if Afghans lost legal status in the United States and people in South Africa were welcomed, Mr. Landao suggested that Afghans did not receive enough background checks, saying the Biden administration “makes us uncertain whether we are uncertain about scrutinizing us on national security.”
Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said protections for Afghan immigrants are always temporary. Trump officials believe temporary protection status is being used improperly to allow people to stay in the United States indefinitely.
Ms McLaughlin said: “Minister Noam decided to terminate the TPS of individuals in Afghanistan because the country’s improved security situation and its stable economy no longer prevented them from returning to their homeland.”
Mr. Trump has long opposed refugees, claiming that the resettlement plan is full of bad people and allows criminals and terrorists to enter the United States.
But he said an exception for the Afrikaans, who said they were discriminated against, denied job opportunities, and were violent due to race. Mr Trump said on Monday that the U.S. “substantially expanded citizenship” because he said they were victims of genocide.
The murders of white farmers are incurred, which is a dissatisfaction among the Dutch, but police statistics show that they are no more susceptible to violent crime than the rest of the country.
Thirty years after the end of apartheid, white South Africans continued to dominate land ownership. Their hiring rates are also much higher than those of black South Africans and are much less likely to live in poverty.
For white Afrikaners, other groups were turned away “for white Afrikaners, openly promoting a global narrative of white persecution.”
The Trump administration’s reason for denying Afghanistan’s temporary protection status is that Afghan immigrants will not face “a threat to their personal safety due to ongoing armed conflict.” (The serious personal threat in “ongoing armed conflict” is one of the specific criteria for temporary protection of U.S. immigration law.)
Experts in the situation in Afghanistan questioned the reasoning and pointed out that security threats still exist, while Afghans who worked with the U.S. military during the 20-year U.S. occupation remained at high risk of imprisonment, torture or execution.
After U.S. troops left the country, Taliban officials said they would not retaliate against people who had assisted U.S. troops or former U.S.-backed Afghan government.
However, the 2023 report of the United Nations Aid Mission in Afghanistan recorded at least 800 human rights acts against former U.S. officials and members of the armed forces who support government service. Abuse includes “extrajudicial killing, forced disappearance, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, treatment and threats”.
The report found that former Afghan Army members were at the greatest risk, followed by national and local police, as well as people working in the former government security bureau.
“What the government does today is betray those who risk their lives, build lives here and believe in our promises,” Shawn Vandiver, president of the Afghan organization, said in a statement.
