WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. State Department issued a statement denouncing "replacement immigration" and promoting "remigration" after the U.S. did not attend the International Migration Review Forum last week. The office that oversees America's refugee assistance programs adopted remigration as one of its three main goals and adopted a policy to resettle only white South Africans and no other refugees.

Under the Trump administration, the State Department has changed its terminology on migration and refugee policy to echo language used by white nationalists, including embracing the "Great Replacement" theory. The term "remigration" refers to encouraging immigrants to return to their home countries.

The office was directed to change the Overton window on how refugees are talked about and treated. In political theory, changing the Overton window means mainstreaming ideas that were previously considered fringe.

"It really means providing legitimacy to concepts and ideas that, before, would have been politically toxic or seen as fringe," said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. "The far-right is interpreting it the same way as I'm interpreting it, which is an endorsement of ethnic cleansing and a total block to legal immigration," he added.

State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott defended the policy shift by pointing to the United Nations. "The role of the United Nations in funding, organizing and facilitating mass immigration into the United States is beyond dispute and without parallel," Pigott said. He claimed that the U.N. established an end-to-end immigration highway transporting millions of migrants without authorization to the U.S. border.

Richard Gowan, a U.N. watcher at the International Crisis Group, described the organization's approach to migration policy. "What U.N. officials want to do is promote regular, safe, legal migration because, in fact, there is a recognition that many economies around the world do need migrants if they're going to grow and prosper. That's the focus. It's not some sort of grand redesign of the world population," Gowan said. He said U.N. diplomats had been expecting the Trump administration to disrupt the International Migration Review Forum.