Should Afrikaners be accepted over other refugees? What Americans said in a poll

Miami Herald

3 days ago

Most Americans take issue with the U.S. government's policy on Afrikaner refugees, according to new polling.
A YouGov/Yahoo News survey found that, while a plurality of Americans are open to welcoming Afrikaners — white South Africans descended from European settlers — there is widespread opposition to prioritizing them over all others.
The poll comes after President Donald Trump's administration accepted 59 Afrikaner refugees into the U.S. in early May — claiming they were discriminated against at home — while the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has remained suspended.
It also comes after Trump met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House on May 21, during which he said Afrikaners were victims of genocide — a claim that has been widely disputed by experts.
Views on refugees generally
The poll — which sampled 1,560 U.S. adults May 22-27 — began by asking respondents for their general views on refugees, who typically flee their home country due to violence or persecution.
A majority, 61%, said they approve of the U.S. accepting refugees from other nations, while 19% said they disapproved.
With that said, a plurality, 43%, said they think the U.S. has welcomed too many refugees in recent years. Twenty-three percent said it accepted the right amount, and 13% said it didn't take in enough.
In recent years, the U.S. has admitted between 11,000 and 60,000 refugees, according to data from Statista.
Views on Afrikaners
When it came specifically to accepting Afrikaners, Americans were divided.
The survey posed the following question: 'Afrikaners are the descendants of white Europeans who came to South Africa centuries ago and later created its system of apartheid. Today, South Africa is more than 80% Black and some Afrikaners say they are being denied jobs and targeted with violence because they are white. Do you think the U.S. should accept Afrikaners as refugees?'
A slim plurality, 36%, said yes, while 31% said no and 32% said they were not sure.
A plurality, 47%, also said Afrikaners are about as deserving of refugee status as people from other countries. Twenty-four percent said they were less deserving, and 10% said they were more deserving.
Views on singling out Afrikaners
When respondents were informed that Afrikaners were being prioritized over other refugees, views became more negative.
In late January, Trump issued an executive order that suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which indefinitely paused the arrival of refugees, except 'on a case-by-case basis.'
A plurality of respondents, 42%, said they disapproved of this decision, while 38% said they approved of it, and 20% were not sure.
Further, 52% said the U.S. should not accept Afrikaners — who were fast-tracked — 'before resuming acceptance of refugees from other countries.' A much smaller share, 22%, agreed with this policy, while 26% said they were not sure.
'White genocide' claim
The poll — which has a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points — also asked respondents whether they believed Afrikaners were victims of 'white genocide.'
A plurality, 40%, said they were not, while 26% said they were and 34% said they were not sure.
During his Oval Office meeting with Ramaphosa, Trump showed videos and news articles alleging large-scale killings of white farmers, claiming 'a genocide' is 'taking place that you people don't want to write about.'
Ramaphosa disagreed with this claim, responding, 'if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here,' referencing white individuals on his team, including his minister of agriculture.
Multiple organizations — including news outlets and nonprofits — have debunked Trump's claims of a genocide.
Fact-checking by Reuters found that some of the images Trump shared with Ramaphosa were not from South Africa but came from unrelated conflicts, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
'The idea of a 'white genocide' taking place in South Africa is completely false,' Gareth Newham, the head of Justice and Violence Prevention at the Institute for Security Studies, told PBS News.
'If there was any evidence of either a genocide or targeted violence taking place against any group based on their ethnicity,' he added, 'we would be amongst the first to raise (the) alarm and provide the evidence to the world.'