Immigration expert Professor Loren Landau has described the departure of the so- called Afrikaner refugees to the United States absurd and performative.
This is after the first batch of 49 people who left South Africa arrived in the US- following US President Donald Trumps Executive Order allowing white Afrikaners, who claim discrimination, to acquire an expedited path to citizenship in the United States.
The only thing I can come up with, is absurd, or ridiculous, but also deeply disappointing. If we look at the people whove been taken and I dont know who they are individually, but we know who they are as a group. This is not a group that is persecuted, theyre not a group that has been-as a group, particularly disadvantaged and they are going as the only refugees now being resettled from Africa and really from the world to the United States. So, if were saying theres a deserving population that needs protection, that needs to find safety somewhere else, this absolutely not that group.
Meanwhile, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation DIRCO says there is no basis to identify the group of white Afrikaners resettling in the US as refugees.
They departed OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg yesterday.