As she waits for a decision in the Ter Apel asylum seekers’ center in the Netherlands, Arc is pessimistic about her chances. She says Dutch government employees have told her they don’t want to “p*** off” the U.S. by branding it an unsafe country.
She expects to be deported, and when that happens, she fears that the Trump administration will find some pretext to imprison her with men.
“I don’t want to be the person that makes the Netherlands decide it’s not safe for trans people [in the U.S.], and change their policy,” she says. “But I suspect that one of us would have to get killed for that to change.
“Which one of us will get to be that person?”
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
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Trump has declared war on the transgender community, leaving Americans to seek asylum — from America
(www.independent.co.uk)
The Netherlands, the country where Anne Frank famously hid from the Nazis. Which they now big up as a tourist attraction and evidence of their resistance to fascism. Now, likely going to bend the knee to fascism by sending modern-day Anne Frank back to the modern-day Nazis.
Fucking pathetic. No backbone, no courage, no morals.
The same, of course, can be said of my country as well.
Money, ignorance, ego, cruelty, hate, and idiocy rule the roost. Europe is not standing up to fascism as it should, but rather, embracing it. Forgetting all the lessons that were learned from the 1930s to 1945.
Netherlanders may have resisted, but their police were very compliant. (top of the wiki page)
Good luck finding a country with cops that wouldn't turn a minority person over for torture.
The Netherlands elected a far right clown who let the coalition implode because -like a dog chasing a firetruck- he had no idea what to do but he had to come up with an excuse to blame others. Despite that, he's still wildly popular.
The Netherlands had an anti immigration protest yesterday where shit was set on fire, so yeah. I don't think it's very safe.
But what if you go to an EU country, then go to the US embassy, and renounce US Citizenship? Can you then try asylum? I mean they can't deport you back to the US if you have no citizenship, right?
🤔
No. It doesnt work that way. Firstly to renounce US citizenship costs money (several thousand) and takes an onerous amount of paperwork including proof of tax returns. Then it takes the appropriate bureaucracies months to process the paperwork
Edit I forgot the secondly.
Secondly the US under current laws wont allow you to renounce until you prove you have a second citizenship
Seek asylum where? Canada? They're also slowly becoming more right wing and cracking down on immigration iirc. Which is unfortunate, since I might be forced to become a criminal to support my sister's right to exist
also cracking down on immigration
That's a false equivalence.
What USA is doing is beyond cracking down on immigration, USA is using Gestapo methods, rounding up people who are in USA legally, and the detained are not allowed to see a judge. It's completely outside the rules of the American constitution.
Huge difference from using legal means of deporting illegal immigrants, where they have a lawyer and a court decides according to the law of the land.
One is fascist methods, the other is not.
True, though it still makes it harder for my sister to seek asylum when they are cracking down on immigration, no? I didn't mean to imply that they are equivalent. Of course America is much, much worse.
However, since Canada also seems to be turning right, it'll more so be a move to delay the inevitable even if she is able to seek asylum. It'd be better than staying here at least, assuming America doesn't invade Canada for Lebensraum within 4 years.
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Sorry to get hung up on the headline - but what other country than America would Americans be seeking asylum from?
America is so hung up on people seeking asylum here that I think they wanted to emphasize that people are seeking asylum from America and not in America before people glossed over the story
Canada for one... Although as a trans person in Canada, I'm not sure how long it's gonna stay ok for us here.
I think a lot of trans people are going to come to Canada (and we should protect them), and then Canada will become a "terrorist threat" because of our harboring terrorists, and then the annexation happens.
On this trajectory we're on, I see it as an inevitability.
All Canadians should be preparing as if we will be at war relatively soon. Every single product you buy from an American company fuels fascism and the eventual takeover of Canada.
If nobody stops MAGA, trans, disabled and "leftist" Canadians are all at risk.
Don't want to be alarmist, more like I hope we all start preparing now in any way we can.
It’s not. It’s going to take time to unfuck ourselves, and in the millisecond world of social media that seems like way too long to hope. But the millisecond world of social media is wrong about that.
No sane rational person has anything but love and respect for Canada. It’s just that an astounding twenty percent of us, who voted, are not sane or rational. Just stupid as hell.
That would be an attack on the Commonwealth. USA won't do that, trump loves the king too.
A lot of people said Trump would not designate trans people as terrorists too. A lot of people said Trump would not open concentration camps too.
Nothing means anything if MAGA gets unchecked power. They're not there yet, but once the military confirms they will fight for Trump, it's over.
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I think it was a figure of speech to highlight how incredible it is that it's America's turn to become a godforsaken country from which a persecuted minority of the citizenry of feel compelled to flee.
Most people can't afford to flee. There isn't anywhere that doesn't have a growing fascism threat at best right now.
These are just fantasies for the slim few with plane ticket money.
I really thought I would see more general solidarity here in the comments from other minorities or general populace, but no...
Also, it wasn't that fast to everyone who's been paying attention the last 10-20 years. It was called 'being paranoid.'
Anyway. Do I have to say it? Once they gays and the browns are all in the trafficking sector, people who thought they could beg, borrow, or negotiate with fascism will start to get disappointed to death.
None of those treaties ever worked out for the indigenous tribes.
Years of systemic job discrimination - almost every trans person will end up being a denied a job because they’re trans at some point - means that most trans people especially can’t afford to flee.
I don’t think any country would recognize us as refugees, yet or ever. So the only option is immigration, which is insanely expensive and complicated.
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The Heritage Foundation is a terrorist organization.
Someone in the EU needs to file a petition to classify the Heritage Foundation as a terrorist organization, maybe take the ADF and CitizenGo into it too.
And Fox news is a propaganda machine.
I sometimes wonder if this is the source of the phrase "slippery slope" as an idiom.
Because once you start silencing public figures from having any ability to speak out against the administration, and you can viably see that there's no real backlash against the responsible parties (usually the government) to doing so, then it's easier to rally against nonconformists. Or doesn't matter who isn't conforming, just that they don't.
So anyone who is specifically a minority of the population, like the LGBTQIA+ community; there's a lot of you, but there's a fuckton more cis/straight people.... You all are different and therefore being branded as enemies of the state. They're just starting with trans people. Make no mistake that they're going to come after the rest of the rainbow, if they're left unchecked.
This is the reason why the LGBTQIA+ community and it's supporters exist, and everyone needs to realize that. When they come after one group, the rest of you aren't far behind. So you all need to stand up and protest this shit, as much and as loudly as you can. I'm not excluded from this, despite being cis/straight. I am an ally of the community and I'll fight shoulder to shoulder with all of you.
They've silenced or cancelled dissenting speech already. Now they're coming for the trans people. This needs to stop or America is just going to get more and more authoritarian over the next few years.
I'm not American, but I welcome any of our American friends who are fleeing and looking for asylum. I live in Canada and I want you all to be safe and happy. Whether that's fixing this shit in the USA, or vacating the states so it can become an inbred authoritarian hellscape. I promise that we have very similar amenities up here, without as many bigots. They still exist here, but not in the same qualities that are there.
At the same time, if you want us to help you fix your own country, you need only tell us what we can do to help.
I'm here for all of you. You're all valuable humans deserving of respect, life, liberty, and the freedom to be who you are. Whatever needs to happen to achieve that, I'm happy to help in any way I can.
I always thought the idiom "slippery slope" came from a muddy hill, possibly right after a fresh rain
Also, pretty sure the US is in freefall slide into facism already. That slope passed two elections ago.
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The only surprise is that it took this long. I'm actually quite surprised Taco 1.0 didn't unleash pogroms on trans in his first term, given how hopped-up these crazies were about where trans might relieve themselves.
I cannot even tell you how many Taco fans revealed who were they were when it came to that by the way, talking about how they might just pop on a wig and a dress so they can use the women's bathroom!!! I mean, wut.
Taco1 was a simple money grab. This time there is a raft of grifters riding the coattails. Some money-oriented but increasingly politico-nazis whoring their way up the power ladder. Taco2 could just as easily been anarcho-communists if only they were the first foot in the door. T remains a simple greed machine, doing the bidding of the highest bidder. But that also includes ass-kissing which counts more as T slips into dementia and looses his grip on the details.
Again, for now, one of the critical differences between any other authoritarian government and the US is we have access to firearms. Don’t allow the jackboots take you without a fight.
Yeah... Too bad the guys with the guns are the fascists.
Not all of them… in fact from my experience, very few of them.
They may be gun nuts but they aren't the only ones with interest in firearms. Plenty of non-right leaning folk are well trained in my experience.
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The system we learn says we're equal under law
But the streets are reality, the weak and poor will fall
Let's tip the power balance and tear down their crown
Educate the masses, we'll burn the White House down
Queensryche - Speak
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I know of people of all kinds, queer and trans, who have been fleeing the country as quietly as possible for several years now.
Other Americans not giving a fuck.
Everybody should give a fuck because, sadly, America has an outsized influence on the rest of the world.
If Luxemburg or Lichtenstein started oppressing trans people, nobody would give a fuck outside of Luxemburg and Lichtenstein. But when America does it, a lot of neo-Nazi fascist-adjacent ultra-religious nationalist crazies the world over feel empowered to try pushing the same shit in their own corner of the world.
I'm in Malaysia, am the person you're replying to, and I agree. Americans, though...
Recently talked to a scientist in Germany who said the job market has gotten more competitive because of all the american scientists who fled the US and came here.
Why do we accept the slippery slope fallacy here without question?
I can't help but think it's another tactic by a certain group to recruit as much support as possible. They don't argue in good faith, ever.
The picture here looks exactly like a kind, gentle person I'd never want to piss off. Speaking from fully in the red-zone of stereotyping, this person looks like someone who could, with a pleasant face, willfully vanish into a spirit realm and make my life miserable or straight up end it. This is not a person I want to piss off or Obi-Wan into becoming more powerful than I could possibly imagine.
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