South Africans heading to Idaho allowed into U.S. because of their race | Opinion
The South African refugees who are being provided refuge in the United States, including nine in Idaho, are being given preferential treatment by the Trump administration. There’s no question about that.
But let’s state the obvious: These refugees are being given preferential treatment not because of their situation or imminent danger, but because of their race.
President Donald Trump’s favorite billionaire — well, other than himself — is Elon Musk, who is from South Africa and is no doubt whispering in Trump’s ear about the “atrocities” that these white South Africans are allegedly enduring.
The far right in the U.S. has jumped on claims that white South Africans are facing widespread discrimination and violence over land ownership, as part of a new law similar to what Americans know as eminent domain. Trump foolishly and ignorantly called it a “genocide.”
But a New York Times investigation of the data shows it’s not true.
Police data showed that of the 225 people killed on South African farms between April 2020 and March 2024, 101 were workers living on farms — most of them Black — while 53 victims were farmers, who are usually white, according to The New York Times.
When asked why he expedited the process for the South Africans, Trump said, “Because they’re being killed.”
Large numbers of deaths should not be trivialized, but thousands of others who are seeking refuge in the United States have fled nations where far more than 53 people are being killed. That didn’t stop Trump from suspending a refugee program that generally has wide bipartisan support, leaving thousands of refugees in limbo.
Now those refugees, who were further along in the process and ready to come to the U.S., get to watch South Africans enter the U.S. waving American flags, elevated because of their race.
Other refugees around the world face real violence, even true genocide, in their home countries, but because they’re Black, Latino or Muslim, they get shuffled to the bottom of the U.S. refugee deck.
They’re from countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo — or “s***hole” countries, as Trump likes to say. “We should have more people from Norway,” he once said. Norway, of course, is over 82% white.
Even though it’s shocking the president of the United States gets to behave this way, none of it is surprising. It is all par for the course for Trump, who has his own version of every event, alternative facts for reality and a completely warped version of documented history.
Someone should get his thoughts on apartheid — after they tell him what it was.
This is a case yet again of Trump just brutalizing federal programs out of his cruelty and not-so-latent racism.
Will Idahoans welcome these South African refugees into our communities? Of course we will. It’s what Idahoans do. And most Americans do. It’s the Idaho Way, just as we would welcome any refugees from any other country — regardless of race.
The problem is not that we are letting white South Africans in. The problem is that we are keeping out — or sending to Salvadoran gulags — innocent people who are in much greater danger because white supremacy is the central logic of Trump’s immigration policy.
Consider the questions MAGA adherents would ask if these people were not white: How do we know they’re not bringing filth and disease into our country? How do we know for certain that they’re not sending us their worst people, their rapists and their murderers? We see photos of a lot of “military age” men. How do we know they’re not terrorists?
How does Trump know these refugees are worthy just by looking at them?
We think we all know the answer to that question.
This story was originally published May 13, 2025 at 12:25 PM.