Some refugees flee from wars and end up in squalid tented camps. Others defy this stereotype. Consider the white HR executive from South Africa whose application for protection in America rested partly on her claim that she had not had a pay rise in nine years because of her skin colour. „It’s a different type of persecution, but it’s still persecution,” says this newly minted refugee, who now enjoys the sunshine and safety of Florida. Of the roughly 6,000 refugees admitted to America since October, nearly all are white South Africans.
At the start of last year 130,000 people were in America’s refugee pipeline. Then Donald Trump closed the programme to all except Afrikaners (white South Africans who speak a language related to Dutch) and other minorities from South Africa. Mr Trump has said that white South Africans face „genocide”, which is nonsense. He also says they suffer „government-sponsored race-based discrimination”, which is true, but complicated. On May 26th he raised their quota for this fiscal year by 10,000 places, to 17,500 (the Afrikaner population of South Africa is roughly 3m).
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