US resettled 10,258 refugees in a year. All but three were white South Africans

Almost every person admitted through the United States refugee resettlement programme in the 2025-2026 fiscal year was a white South African, according to an analysis published by The Guardian on 2 September. Of 10,258 people admitted through resettlement in that period, the analysis reports, all but three came from South Africa. The three others were from Afghanistan.

The same analysis reports that the administration of US President Donald Trump intends to double the initial resettlement support paid to arriving refugees, to $4,500 per person. That figure is a United States dollar amount and converts to roughly R80,000 at current exchange rates, though the rand value moves with the rate and the payment is made in dollars to people living in the United States.

The Guardian piece, written by the academic Heba Gowayed, is a comment article and argues that the pattern is evidence of racial selectivity in US immigration policy. It notes that the same administration has cancelled temporary protected status for roughly 350,000 Haitians and has detained and deported people holding that status. It also notes that refugees admitted through resettlement become eligible for permanent residence after a year and for citizenship five years later, while people on temporary protected status have no such pathway.

We are obliged to be accurate about what the analysis does and does not establish. The 10,258 figure is a count of admissions through one programme in one fiscal year. It is not a count of South Africans who left the country, and it is not a measure of emigration as a whole. South Africa has no single reliable register of citizens who leave, and estimates of the diaspora vary widely depending on who is counting and what they count. The number reported by The Guardian measures who the United States chose to admit, not who chose to go.

What a South African reader will notice is the shape of the selection. The people admitted under this programme are described in the analysis as white South Africans. The programme is the United States Refugee Admissions Program, which is administered by the State Department in coordination with the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Admissions are decided by the United States government. No South African department selects, nominates or approves anyone for it, and no South African official signs off on who is admitted.

The Department of International Relations and Cooperation was asked for its response to the analysis and to the characterisation of the admissions. The department has not yet replied. Its answer will be carried here when it arrives, and the question has been put in writing.

The analysis also draws a comparison with the treatment of Haitians, Venezuelans and Somalis holding temporary protected status, a form of protection granted to people whose home countries are considered unsafe to return to. That comparison is the author’s argument, and it is a United States domestic argument about United States domestic policy. It is not a claim about South Africa’s conduct.

What is fair to say is that the figure raises a question South Africans have argued about for years without resolving. Emigration is a subject on which this country has strong feelings and weak data. The people who leave are frequently described in public argument as a loss, and the argument over how many leave and who they are has never been settled by a reliable count. A United States admissions figure does not settle it either, because it counts one destination and one programme.

There is a second South African angle that the analysis does not develop. South Africans who emigrate to the United States through ordinary skilled work visas, family visas or student routes are not counted in the resettlement figure at all. Those routes remain open and are used. The resettlement programme is a narrow humanitarian channel, and the people who used it in this period were, on the reported numbers, almost entirely white South Africans.

The Enquirer has asked the Department of Home Affairs whether it keeps any record of South Africans admitted to third countries under humanitarian programmes, and whether it was consulted by the United States on the admissions. Home Affairs has not yet replied.

The facts in this account come from The Guardian’s analysis of the 2025-2026 resettlement year. This paper’s contribution is the South African context, the questions put to the departments, and the distinction between a United States admissions count and a South African emigration count. That distinction is the part a reader here needs, and it is the part the original piece had no reason to draw.

Source: The Guardian, Trump admin spends billions to deport Black and brown people while doubling dollars for white ‘refugees’.