Australian Home Affairs Minister: “We’ll Let White South African Farmers in as Refugees”

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He said that white South African farmers are facing “horrific circumstances” of land seizures and violence, and that he had watched television footage and read articles that convinced him the farmers needed help.

He said he had “hope” some of the farmers could be settled in Australia, declaring: “We have the potential to help some of these people that are being persecuted.”

Dutton said he wanted to explore whether the farmers could access visas or humanitarian programs.

“People do need help and they need help from a civilized country like ours,” he added.

“There are existing visa categories where we can accommodate people and we’re just looking at the moment as to what might be feasible. Hopefully we’ll make an announcement in due course.”

Dutton said the farmers could make a contribution to Australian life. “The people we’re talking about want to work hard, they want to contribute to a country like Australia,” he said.

“We want people that want to come here, abide by our laws, integrate into our society, work hard, not lead a life on welfare and I think these people deserve special attention and we’re certainly applying that special attention now.”

Another federal Cabinet minister, Steve Ciobo, agreed the farmers should be given special attention by Australia, arguing the situation in South Africa was “cause for concern”.

“Let’s be frank, if we see in this case — people who are being thrown off their land, being persecuted, I’ve read of people being shot, rapes, all sorts of different things — then I do believe that there’s a role to be played.”

The proposal appears to only be for farmers, which means that it applies to only around perhaps 30,000 people. The vast majority of whites who are not farmers—and who are equally subjected to the rampant criminal violence and corruption which is fast sinking South Africa into typical Third World chaos—are not affected.

Nonetheless, if Dutton’s plan does come to fruition, the precedent it would set—namely that a racial group is fleeing overtly racially-based criminality, dispossession and discrimination—could likely be used by urban white South Africans as well.

 

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