In early July, the top official at the U.S. Embassy in South Africa reached out to Washington asking for clarification on a contentious U.S. policy: could nonwhites apply for a refugee program geared toward white South Africans if they met other requirements?
U.S. President Donald Trump's February executive order establishing the program specified that it was for "Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination," referring to an ethnic group descended mostly from Dutch settlers.
In a diplomatic cable sent July 8, embassy Charge d’Affairs David Greene asked whether the embassy could process claims from other minority groups claiming race-based discrimination such as "colored" South Africans who speak Afrikaans. In South Africa the term colored refers to biracial people, a classification created by the apartheid regime still in use today.
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