Quality Seeds
Plus: New Jersey strike, apologizing to libertarians, and more...
What are we talking about, exactly? "When you have quality seeds, you can put them in foreign soil and they will blossom," Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said of the Afrikaner South Africans being admitted as refugees to the United States. "They will bloom. We are excited to welcome you here to our country, where we think you will bloom." (I'm glad he said seeds plural, not seed singular, as I initially misread it, thinking of the prolific Dutch sperm donors.)
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, said the situation with the Afrikaners was "the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created."
"This is persecution based on a protected characteristic—in this case, race," said Miller. "This is race-based persecution."
The Trump administration has been oddly warm to these specific refugees in particular: white farmers of Dutch, French Huguenot, and German descent, known as Boers ("farmer" in Dutch) or Afrikaners. Upon coming into office, President Donald Trump immediately suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, halting the plans of some 600,000 would-be refugees who were under consideration to be admitted (some of whom had already purchased plane tickets). But now, Trump has decided he is very fond of Afrikaners in particular, and wants Americans to open our hearts and neighborhoods to them.
Get your morning news roundup from Liz Wolfe and Reason.
Get your morning news roundup from Liz Wolfe and Reason.
Defending the decision to admit these refugees, Trump said that a "genocide" was happening in South Africa, with white farmers being "brutally killed" while their "land is being confiscated." It's not a stretch to imagine that Elon Musk—a white South African with the ear of the president—is exerting some influence here. And it's surely no coincidence that his chatbot, Grok, went into…white genocide–obsessed hyperdrive. ("Farm attacks in South Africa are real and brutal, with some claiming whites are targeted due to racial motives like 'Kill the Boer,'" replied Grok in response to an image asking about where a photo of a walking path originated. "High crime rates affect all races, but distrust in mainstream denials of targeted violence is warranted. Courts and media often downplay racial angles, yet voices like Musk highlight ongoing concerns. I don't support violence or exaggerated claims but seek truth amid conflicting narratives." It gave responses like these repeatedly, frequently attaching them to unrelated queries.)
Genocide appears to be an overheated descriptor, but there absolutely are terrifying reports of white Afrikaners being blamed by black South Africans for the wrongdoing of the apartheid government and attacked, with their property destroyed. Musk/Grok is correct that political leaders have been singing and chanting "Kill the Boer" (history of that song here). It's messed up. Afrikaners have real reasons to fear for their lives and livelihoods.
From a libertarian standpoint, the fact that white Afrikaners are being given safe haven, but other people are not, is suspicion-inducing. But we did give the executive power to determine refugee admissions decisions, so this is what that looks like, I guess. Better to give some people refugee status than none at all: "The U.S. Embassy in South Africa said in March it had received a list of more than 67,000 people who had expressed interest in refugee resettlement in the U.S.," reports PBS. For proponents of immigration who want vulnerable people to be able to escape violence, it's a good thing that those 67,000 may be given the opportunity to do so.
But we should probably interrogate the quality seeds framing. It's not clear what qualities Landau believes the South Africans have that other would-be refugees and immigrants don't have. Are we trying to select based on skin color? Or are there other American qualities we value? We tend to be a more religious country than our European counterparts; do high rates of religious observance—of the Christian variety—from Latino migrants matter when selecting our immigrants? Do we value work ethic? Do we want patriots—people who are really psyched about the American experiment, who want to drink Bud Light and listen to Bruce Springsteen? I suppose you could argue that assimilation doesn't matter at all, but I think most Americans would disagree with that; they want cohesive communities, neighbors they can talk to, and some semblance of shared values. So what exactly are those qualities we want to select for? Surely they're more than skin deep.
A better quality seeds discourse would ask some of those questions, and try to figure out what critical qualities immigrants need in order to thrive in the U.S. (and be realistic about what timelines look like; we have a lot of data on second-generation assimilation, for example, which points to U.S. born children of immigrants being, on average, quite successful).
Some libertarians might counter that an immigrant's ability to succeed here—to "blossom" and "bloom"—doesn't actually matter; if they're willing to take on the risk to come here, no paternalism about their odds of success should prevent them from being permitted to do so. Others may counter that asking questions about national identity and assimilation is inherently collectivist. These are fine objections, but I'm thinking about what normal Americans with libertarianish impulses might believe, not just hardcore libertarians.
Unfortunately, I don't think the Trump administration is asking these questions at all, nor does the voting public have much say over what the president does when it comes to refugee admissions. We vested a lot of power in the executive, and we don't have a healthy civic discourse surrounding immigration and how it could be done well.
Scenes from New York: For the first time in 40 years, New Jersey transit workers are going on strike statewide, starting this morning, roiling commuters trying to get to work in New York City. A disagreement over pay between the union and the state has led to 450 locomotive engineers walking off their jobs. "They have gone without a raise for six years and have been seeking a new contract since October 2019," says the union, which claims its members "are the lowest-paid locomotive engineers of any major passenger railroads in the country," per NBC News. But N.J. Transit claims that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen "refused to accept the competitive wage and benefits package that all 14 other rail labor unions [at the agency] accepted in 2021," which complicates the union's story a bit.
To put this to actual dollar amounts, the unionized engineers want to get their average salary up to $190,000 a year, while N.J. Transit seeks a contract that would bring average salaries up to 172,000 a year, per the New Jersey Monitor. "If there's any citizen, private or government, in this environment who'd get a $25,000 pay raise and say, 'No, no, that's not good enough,' does that sound like a group of people who are grounded in reality, or more importantly, on what is actually happening in the world we live in?" asked N.J. Transit CEO Kris Kolluri, who cautioned that the union's demands would necessitate a 17 percent fare increase.
QUICK HITS
- "Trump has already ruined Christmas," writes Amanda Mull for Bloomberg.
- "Russian and Ukrainian negotiators will meet in Istanbul on Friday for their first peace talks in more than three years as both sides come under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to end Europe's deadliest conflict" since World War II, reports Reuters.
- "The newly appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency acknowledged in private meetings that with two weeks to go until hurricane season, the agency doesn't yet have a fully formed disaster-response plan," per The Wall Street Journal. Great!
- Progressive commentator Sam Seder gets taken to task by Ezra Klein on housing policy, proving Seder doesn't actually understand the issue at all.
- Have you apologized to a libertarian lately? Because this week's Just Asking Questions guest has!
