Overview

• A second group of nine white South Africans arrived last week on a commercial flight under the administration’s new refugee scheme.
• The State Department reported nearly 50,000 inquiries and is working through a backlog of more than 50,000 applications from white South Africans.
• Officials have indicated that arrivals could scale up to hundreds or thousands by the second half of summer.
• South African President Cyril Ramaphosa denies that white farmers face systematic persecution and attributes emigration to land reform resistance.
• Legal advocates have filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the program fast-tracks white applicants while other refugee channels remain closed.