AN ARM of the Episcopal Church in the United States, Episcopal Migration Ministries, whose federal contract to settle refugees was curtailed by the Trump administration in January, has refused to resettle a small group of white South Africans whom the administration has since deemed to be refugees.
On Monday, a letter from the Presiding Bishop, Dr Sean Rowe, said that, among the reasons for the decision to end the public-private partnership with the government was the Church’s “steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation” and its ties with the Anglican Church in Southern Africa. The decision was made in consultation with the Archbishop of Cape Town, Dr Thabo Makgoba.
The Afrikaners, about 50 of whom were scheduled to begin arriving in the US as early as Monday, were screened and cleared for travel in the three months since President Trump signed an executive order on 7 February accusing the Black-led South African government of racial discrimination against the white minority. Afrikaners number about three million in a population of 63 million people.
It had, Dr Rowe said, “been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years.
“I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country. I also grieve that victims of religious persecution, including Christians, have not been granted refuge in recent months.”
Episcopal Migration Ministries, one of ten agencies with government contracts to resettle refugees, announced staff redundancies after an executive order from President Trump halted the US’s refugee-assistance programme (News, 7 February). A funding freeze on almost all foreign aid was also announced.
In his letter, Dr Rowe explained: “Since January, the previously bipartisan US Refugee Admissions Program in which we participate has essentially shut down. Virtually no new refugees have arrived, hundreds of staff in resettlement agencies around the country have been laid off, and funding for resettling refugees who have already arrived has been uncertain.
“Then, just over two weeks ago, the federal government informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the US government has classified as refugees.”
Christians, he wrote, “must be guided not by political vagaries”. For his Church, that meant “ending participation in the federal government’s refugee resettlement program and investing our resources in serving migrants in other ways”.
This would include diocesan partnerships; connections with other Episcopal territories, including in Europe, and the Anglican Communion; supporting existing settled refugees; and fund-raising.
Dr Rowe warns, however, that Episcopal Migration Ministries had, in recent years, received more than $50 million annually in federal funds. “This is not a loss that can be bridged with donor funds or proceeds from investments. However, we will raise funds for new and expanded migration ministries across the Church and for our partners in this ministry.”
It had served nearly 110,000 refugees over almost 40 years, regardless of nationality, he concluded. Since March, its remaining employees had continued to serve people who arrived just before or in the first days of the new administration.
“Now that we are ending our involvement in federally funded refugee resettlement, we have asked the administration to work toward a mutual agreement that will allow us to wind down all federally funded services by the end of the federal fiscal year in September. We are working with the affected staff members to provide extensive outplacement services and severance packages.”
On Wednesday, Dr Makgoba thanked Dr Rowe for the Episcopal Church’s actions, and assured him of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa’s gratitude.
“What the Administration refers to as anti-white racial discrimination is nothing of the kind,” Dr Makgoba wrote in a letter. “Our government implements affirmative action on the lines of that in the United States, designed not to discriminate against whites but to overcome the historic disadvantages black South Africans have suffered.
“By every measure of economic and social privilege, white South Africans as a whole remain the beneficiaries of apartheid. Measured by the Gini coefficient, which measures income disparity, we are the most unequal society in the world, with the majority of the poor black, and the majority of the wealthy white.
“While U.S. supporters of the South African group will no doubt highlight individual cases of suffering some members might have undergone, and criticise TEC for its action, we cannot agree that South Africans who have lost the privileges they enjoyed under apartheid should qualify for refugee status ahead of people fleeing war and persecution from countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Afghanistan.”