BRATTLEBORO-No to Afghans. No to Haitians. No to Somalis. But yes to white South Africans. Brattleboro will be resettling 50 of them in the coming months.
This is in line with a controversial refugee program initiated by the Trump administration. While the U.S.’s refugee admissions program remains suspended, leaving thousands of previously approved refugees in limbo, that is not true for white South Africans.
“The Trump administration plans to admit up to 10,000 more white South African refugees into the United States in the coming months, arguing that their status as Afrikaners has left them open to discrimination and persecution at home,” the Associated Press reported in May.
The AP reported that the South African government has called the Trump administration’s claims “baseless,” the story continues.
In February, the president signed an executive order that lambasted a 2024 law passed by the Republic of South Africa, Expropriation Act 13, “in shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights.”
“This Act follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners,” read the executive order, which cut off aid to South Africa and called on the federal government to provide “humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program, for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”
The AP, citing a State Department notice it obtained, reported that the estimated cost for resettling the additional 10,000 refugees is about $100 million.
At least 50 of those Afrikaners are coming to live in southern Vermont, said Joe Wiah, southern Vermont director of the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC).
Wiah was speaking at the Brattleboro Development Credit Council’s CEO Roundtable and Leadership Forum, which took place earlier this month at the School for International Training in Brattleboro.
As with the other refugees who now live in Windham and Bennington counties, the Afrikaners will be resettled through the ECDC.
Some are already here. More will be coming. In January, The Deerfield Valley News reported that Wiah and the ECDC were asking its volunteers to “set aside their opposition to the Trump administration’s policy of allowing thousands of white South Africans to move to the United States while severely restricting the arrival of most other ethnic groups” and help with Afrikaner resettlement.
In the four years it has been working here, the ECDC has helped settle over 600 refugees in both counties.
Most of those refugees have been people of color. Not anymore.
“As refugees, we set up an agency,” Wiah told The Commons. “We resettle anyone that is assigned to us by the federal government. We don’t pick and choose.”
Windham and Bennington counties have already absorbed people from over 10 countries.
“We have people from Venezuela, we have Ecuador, we have Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Eritrea, Ukraine, and some I can’t remember right now,” Wiah said.
The South African newcomers will not displace any of the refugees already living and working here, who have access to the ECDC’s benefits, advice, and services for five years.
“The ones that are here, we’re still serving them in different programs,” Wiah said. “After five years, we assume now that you reach self-sufficiency. And then you can take things on yourself.”
Refugees here are working in hospitals, offices, lumber mills, supermarkets, car dealerships, and a variety of other places.
The biggest challenge for all refugees is housing, Wiah said.
“Housing is the challenge,” he said. “But the gross employment continues. We’re still continuing to save refugees.”
This News item by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.