Marco Rubio slams Sen Tim Kaine for ‘racist’ remarks on white South Africans issue: ‘You are talking about skin colour’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the Trump administration's decision to grant refugee status to 59 white South African Afrikaners.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio found himself defending the Trump administration’s controversial decision to grant refugee status to 59 white South African Afrikaners. The move sparked criticism from Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, who questioned whether race played a role in the decision.

Marco Rubio stands by the Trump administration's controversial decision to offer refugee status to 59 white Afrikaners from South Africa, despite Senator Tim Kaine's inquiries about racial implications. (Reuters)

Rubio stood by the administration's choice, saying, “The United States has a right to allow into this country and prioritise allowance of who they want to allow to come in. We’re going to prioritise people coming into our country on the basis of what’s in the interests of this country. That’s a small number of people that are coming.”

Kaine pushed back, asking pointedly, “So you have a different standard based on the color of somebody’s skin. Would that be acceptable?” Rubio responded sharply, “You're the one who's talking about the colour of their skin, not me.”

Rubio cites ‘volume problem’ as Kaine presses on refugee selection bias

Notably, Kaine directly challenged Rubio on the matter during a tense Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. The back-and-forth unfolded just a day before South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was scheduled to meet former President Donald Trump at the White House.

Kaine opened the exchange by pointing to the special refugee program for Afrikaner farmers, criticizing, “Right now, the US refugee program allows a special program for Afrikaner farmers, the first group of whom arrived at Dulles airport in Virginia not long ago, while shutting off the refugee program for everyone else,” he said. “Do you think Afrikaner farmers are the most persecuted group in the world?”

“I think those 49 people that came surely felt they were persecuted, and they’ve passed … every sort of check mark that had to be checked off in terms of meeting their requirements for that. They live in a country where farms are taken, the land is taken, on a racial basis,” Rubio shot back.

Kaine, however, wasn’t buying it. He pointed out the lack of any special refugee status for Black South Africans during the apartheid era, and questioned why other persecuted groups like the Uyghurs in China or the Rohingya in Myanmar weren’t receiving the same treatment. He even pointed out dissidents from Venezuela, Cuba, and Afghanistan.

Rubio fired back, “The problem we face there is the volume problem. If you look at all the persecuted people of the world, it’s millions of people. They can’t all come here.”