US officials consider advertising campaign to encourage South African Afrikaners to emigrate | American immigration

The U.S. government could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a media campaign in South Africa to understand why more white Afrikaners are not applying to become refugees in the United States, as Donald Trump had hoped.

State Department officials, according to a proposal seen in August by the Guardian, described a research and advertising effort of about $335,000 after applications for the refugee program “trended lower than expected” since Afrikaners were allowed to apply directly online in November 2025. The document, written by the U.S. mission to South Africa with a departmental research unit for the Pretoria embassy, admits that officials know little about things about why.

“There is currently little research on why Afrikaners do not apply for referral to the U.S. refugee admissions program,” the proposal states.

The focus on Afrikaners stems from a February 2025 decree ordering authorities to prioritize the resettlement of Afrikaners while the broader refugee program remained suspended. Administration officials said Afrikaners faced racial discrimination and “white genocide.” The South African government has rejected allegations of genocide, and experts have largely rejected the idea that Afrikaners faced targeted violence or genocide.

Last year, the president limited refugee admissions to 7,500, the lowest in U.S. history, then increased it to 17,500 in May, with the additional spots again reserved primarily for Afrikaners. The overall cap was 125,000 under Joe Biden.

The United States admitted 16,292 refugees in the fiscal year ended September 30, according to its most recent data. The other five were Afghans: three from last November and two from September. A year earlier, South Africans made up 342 of the 38,102 refugees admitted.

The State Department’s plan would occur in three phases. The speech suggests that focus groups would be held in Pretoria and Krugersdorp in Gauteng, Bloemfontein and Kroonstad in the Free State, Stellenbosch and Worcester in the Western Cape and Kimberley and Orania in the Northern Cape, the latter an exclusively Afrikaner separatist community. Each location would accommodate two age groups, 20 to 35 years and 40 to 55 years, with participants grouped by urban or rural setting and household income. A survey of 1,000 Afrikaners, online and offline, would then test which messages work in which communities.

The final phase is a six-month digital campaign, primarily in Afrikaans with possibly some English, aimed at Afrikaners “interested in migration”. Because the community is difficult to reach through conventional social and media channels, the proposal says, the department would hire an agency with local knowledge and use “trusted messengers.”

In response, a State Department spokesperson stated that “we continue to process and admit as refugees Afrikaners in South Africa who escape the threat of government-sponsored racial discrimination.”

“President Trump has made it clear that we are prioritizing the resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are escaping government-sponsored racial discrimination,” as part of U.S. policy resulting from the executive order, the spokesperson added.

Trump’s 2025 order alleged that “South Africa has taken aggressive positions toward the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide before the International Court of Justice, and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop trade, military and nuclear agreements.”

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to Navi Pillay, the South African judge who chaired the U.N. commission that found Israel guilty of genocide in Gaza, leading Trump to rhapsodize on Truth Social: “I don’t know anything about that woman, and neither does anyone else!” and that the prize should have gone to “the great United States of America, whose representative, ME, settled eight wars and many other things.”

The South African government, for its part, has rejected the genocide allegation, calling it unfounded and politically motivated. In New York last month, his foreign minister, Ronald Lamola, said “there was no proof” of the genocide allegation. Pretoria also argued that few South Africans took up the offer, which it said shows these claims are false.

The refugee program is only one element of a broader rupture. Trump announced last November that South Africa would not be invited to the 2026 G20 summit, which the United States will host in Miami in mid-December, citing alleged abuses against white farmers. Washington also cut aid and restricted visas due to South Africa’s racial and land policies.

Last month, the US ambassador to Pretoria, Leo Brent Bozell III, wrote in an editorial that his government was “shocked” by what he saw as Pretoria’s silence on a series of US demands. He spoke of his concerns about the 2024 Expropriation Act and the desire to make rural crime a priority.

The administration is also investing money in this cause. Just before the funds expired, he decided to direct more than $175 million from the State Department’s Human Rights and Democracy Fund into 43 grants worth $176.9 million, as the Guardian reported. That represents most of the $205 million allocated by Congress to the fund, which supports right-wing causes abroad.

One is a $1 million grant to “advance the rights of white Afrikaners” in South Africa and collect data on abuses against minorities. No recipient has been named. Sources with knowledge of the awards process told the Guardian that administration figures personally lobbied for the awards, reflecting the priorities of JD Vance on European cultural identity and Stephen Miller on immigration and support for white minorities.

The office that manages refugee admissions has new management. Adam Zerbinopoulos, a career diplomat, became its senior official on August 31.