The Trump administration is considering more than doubling the annual refugee admission cap to bring more white South Africans to the United States, Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.
Trump, a Republican, suspended refugee admissions from around the world when he took office in January 2025. Weeks later, he issued an executive order prioritizing the resettlement of Afrikaners of European descent, claiming that they faced racial persecution in black-majority South Africa. The South African government vehemently denies these allegations.
The United States (U.S.) Refugee Admissions Program was formally established in 1980, after hundreds of thousands of people fled the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. The program expanded to offer refuge to persecuted people around the world. Trump has used it almost exclusively to bring white South Africans to the U.S., as part of a broader shift in humanitarian protection standards.
In recent weeks, U.S. officials have discussed the possibility of raising the cap from 7,500 to 10,000 refugees, allowing more Afrikaner South Africans with refugee status to enter the country, said sources familiar with internal planning, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The White House referred the questions to the U.S. Department of State.
On Thursday, the 23rd, Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Veprek stated that an increase in the refugee cap is being considered, but did not provide details. “We are analyzing the current pace of resettlement and considering how quickly it is proceeding, and whether we need to increase the cap for the current fiscal year,” he said at an event organized by the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower levels of immigration.
During the apartheid era, which ended with the first democratic elections in 1994, South Africa maintained a racially segregated society, with separate schools, neighborhoods, and public facilities for people classified as Black, mixed-race, White, or Asian. Black people make up 81% of South Africa’s population, according to 2022 census data. Afrikaners and other white South Africans make up 7% of the population.
The United States admitted about 4,500 South Africans as refugees in the first six months of the fiscal year, according to State Department data, at a pace that could exceed the limits already set by Trump for the program. The only refugees other than white South Africans admitted this fiscal year were three Afghans, according to official statistics.
Trump has set the lowest-ever cap on refugees—7,500 for fiscal year 2026, which began on October 1, 2025—down from the 125,000-per-year cap set by former President Joe Biden.
The Trump administration is also discussing the possibility of admitting refugees of other nationalities, according to one of the sources.
U.S. officials are assessing whether religious minorities from Iran and countries that were part of the former Soviet Union could be included in the so-called “Lautenberg” program. This program stems from a 1989 budget amendment introduced by then-Senator Frank Lautenberg, which aimed to facilitate the resettlement of Jewish refugees in the United States.
Source: Reuters
