435
‘No other option’: inside the refugee camp for trans Americans fleeing Trump
(www.theguardian.com)
Canada should really do more in this regard.
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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It's not clear how long Canada can fend off the far right, both internally and from the USA. I hope we can survive but there are too many damn Conservatives around.
~~Conservatives~~ fascists
They’ve been the same for my entire life now. What do you think Nixon and his pals (some of whom are still in politics) were?
We need to ban American media entirely. Québec is lucky in that Americans haven't figured out how to spew their propaganda in French yet. Sometimes I think we'd be better off as a country if we were all francophone
France has its own far-right problem. As do Germany and other countries. Language isn't a barrier to fascism.
Unfortunately, many of us know English well and some are happy to consume that propaganda, so the infection has vectors to spread.
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Would be a win win if we can do some citizenship exchange with those that really want to split off to US.
This is actually part of my weekly letter writing campaign. Canada signed onto the Canada US Safe Third Country Agreement in 2002 which basically means Americans cannot seek refugee status in Canada because wherever you land on the combined territory is where you seek asylum. This means because Americans set foot in America first they cannot seek refugee status in Canada under the legal agreement. The agreement has some room for "exceptions " but it takes a lot of looking into from legal scholarship and has held a risk of American diplomatic retaliation...
Rainbow Railroad ,a Canadian based queer refugee charity, and a number of legal civil rights action groups have been campaigning for the past two years to start the process. A number of us have been writing to our MPs but with a lot of the crisises Canada has been dealing with from economic shocks and diplomatic wheeling and dealing to gain greater economic and security independence after a crash out with the US it seems to be ranked low on the agenda.
We should do more... But we're also going through a political alliance shift the likes of which would have seemed unthinkable five years ago. It's a shit situation and nobody seems to want to draw more agro.
Which is fucking killing me cuz I have so many trans American friends and I just want them to be actually safe 😭
Increasingly as I look around, there are no safe places. Everywhere has it's own brand of problems, and many places are shutting doors rather than creating new paths.
Thank you for all of your efforts.
I read last month that Ireland has reconsidered the US as a safe country. They are more willing than most to buck the neolibreral dogma. But they are not better than most for conditions for refugees. The leftist cooks made a video about trans asylum seekers in Ireland.
They are not having a good time, and it's not clear to me that they are definitely safer either.
We should garbage Bill C-2 then.
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Unfortunately, her case will almost surely be denied since the US has been designated a safe country by Dutch officials, and the trend in most of Europe, under pressure from racist voters and the surging popularity of fascism, is to make the already extremely strict asylum rules even stricter. In some cases (e.g. Denmark) refugee asylum has been all but abolished, in an egregious violation of treaties on assisting refugees (and preventing genocide).
The good news for people like Arc is that for US citizens it is overwhelmingly easier to obtain residency status legally in the EU in countries like the Netherlands, compared to getting a Green Card in the US. She probably should have figured that out before panicking and booking that flight.
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Congratulations to the far-right. You're winning.
Problem: They would take that unironically and agree.
Well, I'm not exactly being ironic. It's unfortunate... they're winning.
I won't stop fighting, and I hate that they're winning. And I believe, as progress always does, that those of us who oppose the far right will eventually win.
I wish I could flee this shitheel country. Issue is that there's currently nowhere progressive that accepts the US as a valid country to flee from.
same, but i'm disabled and there's nowhere anywhere that accepts disabled anyone.
😥
I fucking hate borders, just seeing all these arbitrary lines drawn on a map, it's so fucking infuriating.
People's fates are determined long before they're born, from conflicts long ago.
The only "sin" committed being born on the wrong side of a border
The wild thing is the American southwest. California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas . . . all of that was literally Mexico.
People drew imaginary lines and said "You're an American citizen if you're born here, but not if you're born there". When it's the same goddamned people.
We call Dine people in El Paso Navajo Native Americans. We call the exact same ethnic group 20 miles south in Cuidad Mexican foreigners.
I have disabilities, too. Being trans, older, disabled, and poor is shit. It sucks being seen as the "undesirables" globally.
There are, however, lots of places where you can chain tourist visas, many of which even have a visa exemption scheme for US citizens. Some places even have "working holiday" visas that you can chain if you're under a certain age.
You can juggle visas until the US is recognized as a place to be a refugee from, until you find a legal avenue to permanent residence (like marriage), or until you have the contacts necessary to disappear into the undocumented migrant world.
Or do you still think the US won't get as bad as that?
I think this misses how horrifically expensive this avenue would be. I'm not trying to dismiss that this is a viable avenue for some people, but those people have more financial, social, physical, and mental capital than the majority of trans persons.
When you are given a route to asylum, you have protections and can apply for assistance. You can't do that as a tourist.
So many of us live paycheck to paycheck and, if we sold everything that won't fit in a suitcase, we could barely afford the plane ticket.
We have to make day-by-day analyses and weigh the options. Right now, I'm choosing a semi-stable roof over my head and saving every penny I can manage. My only alternative at this point is to choose homelessness in a foreign country, hoping that I don't get deported back here with no means to rebuild what I've lost.
Being homeless and marginalized in the US is not a viable option. I've literally done that before.
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The Dutch authorities are also very wary about declaring the US an unsafe country and provoking Trump, said Shrover. They think: ‘How will it look? How will the Americans respond to that? We can’t do this to our most important ally, saying that they don’t have a functioning democracy.’”
Important? Very
Ally? At this point, it's our enemy
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