First white South Africans board plane for US under Trump refugee plan

By Reuters

The first 49 white South Africans granted refugee status for being deemed victims of racial discrimination under an offer by U.S. President Donald Trump were flying to the U.S. on Monday.

Under Trump, Washington has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world but is prioritising Afrikaners, the descendants of mostly Dutch settlers.

Treating white South Africans as refugees fleeing oppression has drawn a mixture of alarm and ridicule by South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has waded into a domestic issue it does not understand.

South African media, too, have shown little sympathy for the asylum seekers, with many keeping them off front pages and calling them “refugees” in quotation marks.

The charter plane carrying the 49 from Johannesburg was due into Washington Dulles airport at around 12:30 (1630 GMT). People familiar with the matter said the South Africans would participate in a press conference