Democrats appear to be politicizing yet another move by President Donald Trump, this time claiming he gave preferential treatment to South African refugees because they are white.
The Trump administration on Monday welcomed 59 white South Africans granted refugee status in the United States, citing racial discrimination as the basis for their admission. The move drew criticism from Democrats, however, who made the issue about race.
While Trump has restricted refugee admissions from many non-white populations globally, he announced in February that the U.S. would offer resettlement to Afrikaners, descendants of primarily Dutch settlers, after many said they were increasingly subjected to discrimination in the black-majority country.
Asked about his February executive order granting refugee status to white South Africans, Trump said on Monday, “It’s a genocide that’s taking place.” Reuters and other outlets claimed Trump didn’t have any evidence to back up his claim.
But Trump adviser Elon Musk, who is South African, cited in an X post a political rally that took place last Friday in South Africa, where Black leaders of a far-left opposition party sang a song that has the lyrics “Kill the Boer, the farmer.” Boer is a word that refers to an Afrikaner.
“Very few people know that there is a major political party in South Africa that is actively promoting white genocide,” Musk wrote. He linked to a video of the rally, The Associated Press noted.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X late Monday that the song “is a chant that incites violence. South Africa’s leaders and politicians must take action to protect Afrikaner and other disfavored minorities. The United States is proud to offer those individuals who qualify for admission to our nation amid this continued horrible threat of violence.”
Members of South African’s fourth-largest political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, which won nearly 10 percent of the seats in Parliament in last year’s national elections, were singing the song in the video posted by Musk. Some in the country oppose the group, and the song has been branded as hate speech and was banned a decade ago, according to the AP.
“But it was the subject of several other legal cases before a 2022 ruling found that it was not hate speech and protected under freedom of speech because there was no proof it incited violence,” the AP added.
Nevertheless, Democrats and most media outlets, which tend to lean left, have openly criticized Trump’s decision to permit a very small number of white South Africans to enter the country as refugees.
However, these same lawmakers and media were silent when President Biden allowed tens of millions of migrants from non-white nations to enter the country illegally.
“It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe of the Episcopal Church wrote in a letter to the church’s followers. He added that the church will stop working with the Trump administration regarding the resettling of all refugees after being asked to resettle Afrikaners.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the most senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the move “baffling.”
“The decision by this administration to put one group at the front of the line is clearly politically motivated and an effort to rewrite history,” she said in a statement on Monday.