Donald Trump claims that white South Africans face persecution and set up a refugee program to help them immigrate to the U.S. last year, a remarkable exception in his ban on all other refugees. But in reality, many of them are now returning to South Africa.
In November, the South African government set up a portal for people to check their citizenship status after repealing a law that revoked the citizenship of some South Africans who left the country. So far, 12,000 people have used the portal, and at least 1,000 people have reclaimed their citizenship, the country’s Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber told Reuters.
“There is definitely a sense of optimism for South Africans abroad,” Schreiber told Reuters. He’s part of the white-led Democratic Alliance party, which has ruled in coalition with the dominant African National Congress for the last two years.
Many of those returning to South Africa are leaving the United States, citing the political situation under the Trump administration. “People are being shot in broad daylight. American citizens are being shot and killed,” 53-year-old Andrew Veitch told Reuters, referring to ICE’s attacks in Minneapolis and elsewhere. “I don’t want to live in a place like this.” Veith, who moved to California in 2003 after being held up at gunpoint in his car, plans to move back to South Africa later this year.
Trump’s program has taken in 3,500 South Africans since it began in May 2025, with applicants complaining to Reuters that they were victims of racially motivated crime and job discrimination due to employment equity laws attempting to correct decades of racial apartheid that disenfranchised South Africa’s Black majority.
Statistically speaking, though, the unemployment rate in South Africa is 35 percent for Black people as opposed to 8 percent for whites, according to government data. Farm murders, an issue that Trump has highlighted using false information, are actually higher for Black South Africans as well.
Despite Trump’s best efforts, recruitment agencies are seeing increases in white South Africans overseas interested in finding jobs in the country. Others are interested in returning due to the lower cost of living, and scoff at Trump’s claim that they would face a “genocide.”
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