President Donald Trump's deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, spoke to the press while welcoming over 50 Afrikaner refugees on Monday. He told the BBC that one of the main reasons that Trump chose these refugees over others is that they fit in more easily.
"Some of the criteria is making sure that refugees did not pose any challenge to our national security and that they could be assimilated easily into our country," Landau said.
The flippant comment enraged commentators who argued that claiming "assimilation" was another word for helping white people.
"This is part of a Trump Day One EO. He shut down the refugee resettlement program and said it could only come back once the program had been changed 'to admit only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States.' For Trump, that’s Afrikaners," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. He included a screen capture of Trump's executive order.
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On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that the United States “lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees.”
"Translation? 'White.' For Trump, it’s WHITE refugees," said former Rep. Joe Walsh, of Illinois, who left the Republican Party.
"The Afrikaner stunt is the kind of thing that has backfired so far -- it creates legal arguments for other refugees about animus. But holy hell he's not hiding the white sheets," said national security expert Marcy Wheeler.
The Albuquerque Free Press posted the excerpt of the poem on the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." The account then commented, "as long as they’re white."
Retired NBA player Etan Thomas agreed that the comment from Landau about assimilating was code for, “Because they are white."
"They're also so useless they couldn't make white privilege work for them here," commented pianist Albert Combrink.
University of Connecticut journalism professor Mike Stanton remarked, "This guy puts the 'a--' in assimilate."
