What White Refugees Reveal About Democrats’ Vision For America

After four years of unrelenting migration, where millions of unvetted immigrants entered the United States under Joe Biden’s watch, President Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office, immediately pausing the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The order acknowledged that the U.S. cannot now absorb and assimilate large numbers of refugees into American communities, while still allowing for case-by-case exceptions.

One such exception became a reality last week when American officials welcomed 59 white South African refugees to the United States.

These were the first arrivals of Afrikaners under a second executive order that explicitly called for their resettlement due to the combination of farm attacks, race-based discrimination, and land seizure laws recently promulgated by the South African government. Despite claims from the African National Congress that these assertions are a “completely false narrative,” one only needs to watch this AfriForum documentary to understand the dire situation Afrikaners face.

While the scene at Dulles Airport was joyous for the refugee families escaping violence and racial persecution, their mere presence elicited vitriol from Democrats, the corporate media, and even the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, who cited “racial justice” in opposing resettling white South Africans.

This backlash to such a small number of refugees, who happen to be white, reveals something more profound than disagreement over refugee policy. For many on the left, immigration and refugee resettlement are not just a humanitarian obligation; they are a form of historical redress for past colonial sins. Put more bluntly, the apoplectic reaction to welcoming just 59 white South African refugees suggests that, for Democrats, immigration is not about compassion. It’s about getting revenge via demographic transformation and wealth confiscation. 

Democrats believe millions of immigrants from the Third World deserve to enter the United States annually, whether illegally or legally, because America, even after 400 years, was founded on “stolen land” and is therefore an illegitimate nation. 

At the same time, white South Africans are illegitimate refugees fleeing persecution because, even after living on the African continent for around 400 years, Afrikaners live on land they “stole” and are now simply refusing to give it back.

In both cases, Americans and Afrikaners deserve whatever happens to them because revenge lies at the heart of racial and multicultural “equity.” But for multiculturalism to fulfill its goal of complete demographic transformation, Western countries like the United States must accept everyone, regardless of the number. They also cannot be selective about who enters by prioritizing immigrants who can more easily assimilate into a dominant, shared Western culture, such as Afrikaners. In fact, assimilation is actively discouraged as evidenced by the number of heritages that require month-long celebrations.

Pat Buchanan articulated the importance of a shared culture in his book Suicide of a Superpower:

For what is a nation? Is it not a people of a common ancestry, culture, and language who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, share the same music, poetry, art, literature, held together, in Lincoln’s words, by “bonds of affection … mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone?” If that is what a nation is, can we truly say America is still a nation?

There is one more layer to the project of mass immigration and multiculturalism: deliberately shifting the balance of political power. Mass immigration, whether through legal pathways or illegal entry, has not just profoundly influenced and changed American and Western culture overall, but it has also begun a potentially irreversible shift in political power toward Democrats. Demography is, in fact, destiny. 

How so? First, democracy acts as a force multiplier when demography and identity politics come into play. Increasing (importing) the number of people who will vote your way will eventually translate to power.

For example, when enough foreigners needing government assistance enter a state, they will naturally vote for the party that promises more government assistance. Historically, that has been the Democrat Party.

It is, in part, why California, a state once won decisively by Republican President Ronald Reagan, will forever be a blue state. As the immigrant population of California has increased, Republican voter registration has plummeted.

Second, with the surge of identity politics in America, demography will increasingly dictate the distribution of society’s wealth and rewards. We can see this play out in South Africa, as whites, while being a minority of the population, reportedly own a majority of the farmland. The African National Congress cites this situation as justification for redistribution and land confiscation, all in the name of equity, of course.

This ties into the third reason why demography is key to Democrats’ future political dominance: their focus on egalitarianism, which holds that all groups are equal, no matter their backgrounds. Within this framework, wherever inequality of outcome exists, a systemic force like “institutional racism” is stated as the probable cause. 

By bringing in endless unassimilable immigrants from the Third World, Democrats can then compare their increased need for government assistance to that of native white citizens, thereby “proving” America is “unequal” and institutionally racist. The remedy to this inequality is, of course, a greater redistribution of wealth and rewards from the majority (citizens) to minority groups (immigrants).

This political power dynamic will accelerate the more demographic change accelerates, ultimately culminating in “The End of White America” — a goal the left is not shy about celebrating or hastening. At that point, white Americans and Afrikaners will have even more in common.

The controversy over resettling a mere 59 white South Africans makes clear what has long lurked beneath the surface of Democrats’ immigration identity politics: It is not really about need, merit, or even compassion. It is about revenge and power.

Democrats’ selective outrage reveals that the demographic transformation of the West is not a byproduct of migration but the goal itself — an ideological crusade to dismantle historic nations in the name of equity and historical retribution. 

If America and the West are to survive as coherent societies, they must reject this vision. They must reaffirm the right to control their borders, prioritize cultural cohesion and assimilation over ideological experiments, and acknowledge that a nation indifferent to who joins it will eventually cease to be a nation at all.

Adam Johnston is a contributor to The Federalist whose work has been featured in The Blaze, WrongSpeak Publishing, and Man’s World Magazine. He is also the creator of conquesttheory.com, where he regularly writes about politics, history, philosophy, and technology. You can find him on X @ConquestTheory.