This article, authored bySean Husteddeis republished under the Creative Commons “CC BY-NC-ND” license with permission fromThe Daily Caller News Foundation.

A Cato Institute researcher said it was “just absurd” that white South Africans dominated 2026 refugee resettlement into the United States.

Cato Institute Immigration Studies Director David Bierposteda screenshot on X of Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 US Refugee Admission Program (USRAP) data thatshowedonly 1,651 refugees were admitted to the United States from October to January. All but three were white South Africans.

Just absurd. Not a single refugee in the world was allowed to come legally, except for white South Africans.pic.twitter.com/OzHu0vnj6P

Bier told the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) that “white South Africans” are not the only refugees worthy of resettlement to the United States. Bier said the refugees are legal immigrants, not asylum seekers or illegal immigrants, and would have gone through a very extensive vetting process in the US immigration system.

“Although the refugee process needed reforms, those reforms should have focused on empowering Americans as individuals to take financial responsibility for resettling more refugees, not ending the process for nearly everyone,” Bier told the DCNF. “Most refugees blocked by the president’s actions are persecuted Christians.”

In previous years, most African refugees processed through USRAP came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Congolese migrantsaccountedfor almost 20% of the 100,034 refugees that came to the US in 2024, according to USRAP FY data.

Dr. Matthew O’Brien, deputy executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), told the DCNF that neither Bier nor the Cato Institute seemed to care about a refugee’s skin tone when they were non-white.

“If one examines the number of Caucasians versus non-Caucasians admitted to the U.S. over the history of the refugee program, the evidence tends to demonstrate an explicit bias against white applicants,” O’Brien told the DCNF. “Particularly since the Refugee Act of 1980, the overwhelming number of refugee admissions have been non-Caucasians.”

“To any rational observer, the only thing absurd about this situation is that CATO and Mr. Bier seem to be focused on a complete non-issue while remaining utterly disinterested in examining the frightening levels of fraud and deception heretofore connected with the refugee program,” said O’Brien.

Source: modernity