WA has taken in just 198 refugees this year. They're all South African

Of all the states, Washington had a reputation as the most open to the world.

At the top of the list was our state's welcoming posture toward foreign refugees. We often ranked in the top five in the nation for helping resettle the world's war-torn exiles, and sometimes No. 1. Just two years ago, local relief agencies here took in more than 2,000 Afghans who had aided the U.S. war effort - the most, per capita, of any state.

In January 2025 alone, the last month before Donald Trump retook office, local Washington families sponsored refugees from 19 different countries, helping them start new lives. They were from countries as disparate as Ukraine and Eritrea, Syria and Sudan.

All this came to a sudden halt. For the rest of 2025 we helped very few refugees, after Trump shut down the program.

It has restarted this year, only with a twist. Washington has resettled 198 people so far in 2026. They're all from one place, South Africa.

Nationwide all 5,948 refugees America has taken in since Jan. 1, 2026, have been from that one country, according to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Almost all are white Afrikaners, who generally trace their roots to Dutch settlers and asked the U.S. government to come here based on their ethnicity and conservative values.

We are mainly Christian, conservative and English-speaking, with a strong Western cultural orientation," reads a petition from the lead resettlement advocacy group, Amerikaners. "We do not seek handouts but rather an opportunity to assimilate seamlessly and productively into the United States."

Applicants must be of Afrikaner ethnicity (white) or a member of a racial minority in South Africa (i.e. not Black).

Relief agencies here have been helping some of the new arrivals. One told me that some arrive with money and resources, and so don't need as much assistance as previous refugees.

One family from South Africa that came to Spokane in May has been detailing their story on Facebook. One of their first moves was to buy a car, a Hyundai Tucson SUV, which they did with cash, they said. Often refugees in the past would arrive penniless after living in tents in aid camps.

The administration has shifted the program's main focus.

"They're not looking across the world for people who are truly in need," said Larry Bartlett, who ran the U.S. refugee program for 15 years and now is on the board of Lutheran Social Services, to The Washington Post. "They're looking at one specific country that the Trump White House has decided to focus on for political purposes."

The Afrikaners say they do face race-based persecution, in a country where they're a minority. Typically though refugees have already been forced from a country by war or repression.

One of the largest Washington state relief agencies, World Relief, has highlighted this distinction.

"World Relief has been assigned a small number of these new Afrikaner arrivals," the Christian-based agency said, "and we will serve them with the same compassion and respect we serve others.

"The U.S. refugee admissions program remains entirely closed to those who meet the traditional legal definition of a refugee, individuals who have fled their countries of origin because of persecution," the agency protested last month.

Said U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle: "The Administration's shameful approach to refugee resettlement is organized around prioritizing white-only Afrikaners and betraying everyone else." She added that "thousands of Afghan allies who risked their lives for our nation" have been left "twisting in the wind."

No Afghans have been accepted into Washington so far this calendar year, federal records show. The last ones arrived last December.

One local relief agency, Tacoma-based Lutheran Community Services Northwest, said in a lawsuit that a refugee policy that's effectively whites-only is discriminatory and un-American.

The Trump team is trying to "remake the demographics of this country by blocking nonwhite refugees from entering the United States and making life within the United States as unbearable as possible for the overwhelmingly nonwhite, non-European refugees and their family members who live here," the suit argues.

Seattle law firm - and noted Trump antagonist - Perkins Coie is handling that case. The suit cites Trump's comments during the 2024 campaign when he complained that the U.S. doesn't get refugees from "nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland?"

It also quotes him calling all Somalis "garbage" and that "we don't want them in our country" - which ranks as the most racist, xenophobic thing any U.S. president has said publicly in modern times.

"This is not how refugee protection is supposed to work," the lawsuit sums up, noting Congress designed it to "protect vulnerable people based on need, not preference."

Historically refugees have come in all races, from all over. Washington state took in a record number of Ukrainians in recent years, most of whom were ethnically white. That was because about 6 million Ukrainians were displaced after Russia invaded that country in 2022.

I don't have any problem with America welcoming Afrikaners. I've always felt the main flaw with our immigration and refugee caps is that they're too low. Border security combined with more legal slots to come here should be the policy of the nation of immigrants.

The Afrikaners are just seeking better lives. It sounds as if most should apply under the standard immigration programs, though, not the refugee system.

But the near-total ban on all other, nonwhite refugees? It's a disgrace, an embarrassment on the world stage.

We are currently hosting the World Cup, which lists its main appeal right in the name. It's cross-boundary, multicultural sport, like the Olympics. Authoritarian host countries like Russia and Qatar were accused of exploiting the World Cup to "sports-wash" their regimes, allowing them to pretend to be more open to the world than they really are. Now we are that sports-washing country.

It doesn't say "whites-only on the Statue of Liberty, does it?

As some readers regularly remind me, Trump was duly elected. So this is what America wants, they say. Perhaps that's so, as Trump was blunt about his intentions. We're now as closed to the broader world as we've been in generations - except for just the right people.

Maybe they really should take the Statue of Liberty down.

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This story was originally published June 15, 2026 at 1:38 PM.