White Afrikaners flooding out of South Africa to the United States

Thousands of white Afrikaners are leaving South Africa to work and live in the United States through the refugee programme and H-2A visas.

On 7 February 2025, United States President Donald Trump announced actions to address the ‘egregious actions of the Republic of South Africa’.

As part of these actions, he announced a refugee resettlement programme for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.

It prioritised humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program.

Within the first month of the programme’s launch, the U.S. State Department said it had received over 8,000 initial inquiries.

The first group of 59 Afrikaner refugees arrived at Dulles International Airport on 12 May 2025. Since then, the programme has accelerated significantly.

Over the next year, approximately 6,500 South Africans, mostly white Afrikaners, left South Africa for the United States under the refugee programme.

In October 2025, the United States set a strict annual refugee cap of 7,500 for the entire 2026 fiscal year, effectively reserving nearly all of it for South Africans.

However, because the pipeline was completely bottlenecked by thousands of pending files, the U.S. administration issued an emergency declaration.

Through this declaration, the South African allocation was increased by an additional 10,000 slots, raising the ceiling to 17,500.

Although no official figures on the number of Afrikaners who have left South Africa are available, indications suggest that the refugee programme is over-subscribed.

Newsday has received information that the processing centres in South Africa linked to the refugee programme are packed.

This shows that thousands of white Afrikaners are keen to leave South Africa and make the move to the United States as refugees.

Thousands of Afrikaners working on farms in the United States

The latest data from the United States show that 14,694 South Africans entered the country on H-2A visas in 2024.

The H-2A visa is a work visa which allows a foreign national to enter the United States for work in a specific job or occupation.

The H-2A temporary agricultural workers program, often called the H-2A visa program, helps American farmers fill employment gaps by hiring foreign workers.

These foreign workers can perform temporary or seasonal agricultural work, including, but not limited to, planting, cultivating, and harvesting.

Temporary or seasonal agricultural work can happen on farms, plantations, ranches, nurseries, ranges, greenhouses, orchards, or other similar locations.

White Afrikaners, known for their exceptional farming skills, have quickly become a favourite among American farmers.

USAFacts, an organisation that makes government data easier to access, showed that South Africa had the second-highest number of H-2A visa recipients in 2024.

This is noteworthy as a relatively small country at the southern tip of Africa should not rank so highly. The reason is simple: American farmers love working with Afrikaners.

American farmers and recruitment agencies said Afrikaners are such good workers that it pays to fly them across the Atlantic to work on their farms.

Firstly, they are fluent in English. This makes direct and clear communication easier in training, safety protocols, and farm management.

Many Afrikaners come from farming backgrounds, which means they are skilled in operating advanced, heavy agricultural machinery and equipment.

Another benefit is that South Africa’s peak growing and harvesting periods are the opposite of those in the United States.

That means that skilled South African workers can travel to the U.S. during spring and summer harvest seasons without disrupting their native winter cycles.