[Source: Reuters]

In early July, the top official at the U.S. embassy in South Africa reached out to Washington asking for clarification on a contentious U.S. policy: could non-whites apply for a refugee program geared toward white South Africans if they met other requirements?

President Donald Trump’s February executive order establishing the program specified that it was for “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination,” referring to an ethnic group descended mostly from Dutch settlers.

In a diplomatic cable sent July 8, embassy Charge d’Affairs David Greene asked whether the embassy could process claims from other minority groups claiming race-based discrimination such as “coloured” South Africans who speak Afrikaans. In South Africa the term coloured refers to mixed-raced people, a classification created by the apartheid regime still in use today.

The answer came back days later in an email from Spencer Chretien, the highest-ranking official in the State Department’s refugee and migration bureau, saying the program is intended for white people.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the precise language in the email which was described to the news agency by three sources familiar with its contents.

The State Department, responding to a request for comment on July 18, did not specifically comment on the email or the cable but described the scope of the policy as wider than the guidance in Chretien’s email.

The department said U.S. policy is to consider both Afrikaners and other racial minorities for resettlement, echoing guidance posted on its website in May saying that applicants “must be of Afrikaner ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa.”

Chretien declined to comment through a State Department spokesperson. Greene did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

The internal back-and-forth between the embassy and the State Department – which hasn’t been previously reported – illustrates the confusion in how to implement a policy designed to help white Afrikaners in a racially diverse country that includes mixed-race people who speak Afrikaans, as well as whites who speak English.

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