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The South African government has criticized the US decision to prioritize refugee claims from white Afrikaners, saying claims of white genocide have been widely discredited and lack credible evidence.
It highlights an open letter published by prominent members of the Afrikaner community earlier this week rejecting the narrative, with some signatories calling the relocation scheme racist.
The limited number of white South Africans signing up to move to the US is an indication that they were not being persecuted, it added.
On Thursday, the administration of US President Donald Trump announced its the lowest annual refugee limit in history – down to just 7,500.
Exact figures for the number of white South Africans who were admitted through the US scheme are not available.
Recent crime statistics in South Africa do not show that more white people are victims of violent crime than other racial groups.
Earlier this year, President Trump offered refugee status to Afrikaners – who are mostly descendants of Dutch and French settlers – after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law allowing the government to seize land without compensation in rare cases.
Most private agricultural land is owned by white South Africans, who make up just over 7% of the population.
A few months ago, South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool was ruled out after accusing Trump of “mobilizing supremacism” and trying to “project white victims like a dog whistle.”
In the Oval Office in May, Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and said white farmers in his nation were being killed and “persecuted.”
President Trump held up a photo purporting to show body bags containing the remains of white people in South Africa, but Reuters later identified the photo as his own – taken thousands of kilometers to the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.
Washington has not commented on the claim that they misidentified the image.
The White House also released a video it says shows graves of murdered white farmers. It was later revealed that the videos were scenes from a 2020 protest in which the crosses represented farmers killed over several years.
