WASHINGTON ¨C In early July, the top official at the U.S. Embassy in South Africa reached out to Washington asking for clarification on a contentious U.S. policy: could nonwhites apply for a refugee program geared toward white South Africans if they met other requirements?
U.S. President Donald Trump¡¯s February executive order establishing the program specified that it was for ¡°Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination,¡± referring to an ethnic group descended mostly from Dutch settlers.
In a diplomatic cable sent July 8, embassy Charge d¡¯Affairs David Greene asked whether the embassy could process claims from other minority groups claiming race-based discrimination such as ¡°colored¡± South Africans who speak Afrikaans. In South Africa the term colored refers to biracial people, a classification created by the apartheid regime still in use today.
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