By Simon Nare
The SA Chamber of Commerce in the United States has confirmed that an overwhelming number of white South Africans have expressed interest in moving to the US following an offer by President Donald Trump to resettle in his country.
In response to the Expropriation Act, Trump signed an Executive Order on 7 February granting refugee status to Afrikaners who wished to resettle in the US.
According to Trump, he signed the order to promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.
SACCUSA chairman and president Neil Diamond said that within hours of the announcement of the order, the chamber was flooded with inquiries by interested white South Africans who wanted to know about the process to resettle.
“In the first few hours after the news broke and it went live, we received thousands of emails, text messages, WhatsApp, Facebook messages to an extent that our system crashed. We couldn’t deal with the sheer volume that was coming through.
“What we have done is that we have subsequently put a link on our website so people can register for information only not to register for benefits or anything to become a refugee. It is just so we can share information,” Diamond said in a Biz News interview.
Diamond revealed that at last count, the chamber had received inquiries from 17,000 individuals, who had made requests on behalf of their families. They represent 50,000 people.
He could not say whether these inquiries were from Afrikaners but stressed that the requests were in English. Diamond said that currently there were no details of how the order was going to be implemented or the scale and scope of it.
It was also unclear how the term Afrikaner was going to be defined for the resettlement process, he said.
He added that the chamber has reached out to US Mission in South Africa to inquire about the process that would be followed.
“Firstly, get South Africans into a list somewhere and secondly what will be the criteria and how would they adjudicate that, what will be the process that will be followed to resettle South Africans to the US.
“So, at this stage there is not much that we can share. We know that the impact is gonna be severe and we know that the overwhelming number that has expressed interest will only grow in the coming weeks and days,” he said.
Diamond said that due to the mixed reaction to Trump’s order, the chamber has appealed for people to respect those who wanted to take advantage of the offer and those who wanted to stay.
He said the order has created a lot of animosity and that was unnecessary because nobody knew how the process was going to pan out as details were still unavailable.
Diamond said the order was not issued after Expropriation Act was signed into law, but rather it followed several other policies that were perceived to disadvantage other minority groups.
He added that the chamber has been trying to reach out to its US counterparts to smooth things over following the diplomatic fallout, but so far it had heard nothing.
Diamond the chamber would need the government to lead the way in trying to resolve the diplomatic fallout.
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