US officials considering ad campaign to urge South African Afrikaners to emigrate

Key points

• US officials may spend about $335,000 on research and ads to learn why Afrikaners are not applying for refugee resettlement.
• Trump's February 2025 executive order prioritized Afrikaner resettlement while the broader refugee program remained suspended.
• South Africa rejects claims of white genocide, and Pretoria says low application numbers show the claims are false.

US officials are considering a media campaign in South Africa costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to find out why more white Afrikaners are not applying to become refugees in the United States. An August proposal seen by the Guardian outlines a roughly $335,000 research and advertising effort after applications to the refugee program "trended lower than expected" since Afrikaners were allowed to apply directly online in November 2025.

The document, written by the US mission in South Africa with a department research unit for the embassy in Pretoria, says officials know little about the reasons. It states there is currently little research about why Afrikaners are not applying to request referral into the US Refugee Admissions Program.

What the plan involves

The state department plan would proceed in three phases. The proposal suggests focus groups in Pretoria and Krugersdorp in Gauteng, Bloemfontein and Kroonstad in Free State, Stellenbosch and Worcester in Western Cape and Kimberley and Orania in the Northern Cape, with the latter being an Afrikaner-only separatist community.

Each location would host two age groups, 20 to 35 and 40 to 55, 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, mostly in Afrikaans with possibly some English, aimed at Afrikaners interested in migrating. The proposal says the department would hire an agency with local knowledge and use trusted messengers because the community is hard to reach through conventional social and press channels.

There’s currently little research about why Afrikaners are not applying to request referral into the US Refugee Admissions Program

— the August proposal

Policy background and response

The focus on Afrikaners flows from a February 2025 executive order directing officials to put Afrikaner resettlement first while the broader refugee program stayed suspended. Administration officials had said Afrikaners face racial discrimination and white genocide. The South African government has rejected the genocide claims, and experts have widely dismissed the idea that Afrikaners face targeted violence or genocide.

Last year, the president restricted refugee admissions to 7,500, the lowest in US history, then raised it to 17,500 in May, with the added slots again going primarily to Afrikaners. The overall cap was 125,000 under Joe Biden. The US admitted 16,292 refugees in the fiscal year that ended 30 September, according to its most recent data reporting. The remaining five were Afghans: three from last November and two from September. A year earlier, South Africans made up 342 of 38,102 refugee admissions.

A state department spokesperson said the US continues to process and admit Afrikaners in South Africa who are escaping the threat of government-sponsored race-based discrimination. The spokesperson added that President Trump has been very clear that the US is prioritizing the resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, as part of US policy from the executive order.