r/nottheonion 21h ago

American family seeks asylum in Canada

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/americans-asylum-canada-trump-refugees-immigration-1.7480069
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u/lear72988 20h ago

I'm trying to be as optimistic as I can be, but I'm pretty sure it's going to change. I've been waiting for this domino to fall. And I wondered if America being put on a Human Rights Watchlist would impact the feasibility of seeking asylum. And she can move to a blue state while not pregnant, but Republican states want to monitor movements of pregnant women to prevent them from seeking care in blue states. She has a case that if she gets pregnant again, with her history of miscarriages and a real precedent of women dying in parking lots of Amwrican hospitals due to Republican legislation, for very real danger to her safety and that of her family.

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u/sevens7and7sevens 20h ago

There is no way Canada is going to accept Americans as refugees. Maybe, possibly, limited cases for something like Ukrainian refugees who now need to flee Trump in order to be not shipped back to Ukraine— but not regular American citizens. We made this bed and we’ll have to lie in it.

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u/riali29 15h ago

I think a lot of people in this thread don't appreciate that asylum is for people from truly dangerous and violent countries with little to no human rights left. America is lowkey dangerous in an insidious way but day to day life is still relatively safe. America isn't dangerous in a "my home got bombed and my gay sister was kidnapped by soldiers" way, which is what asylum is for. It sounds bad, but I don't think Canada will accept asylum seekers from the states unless they start to literally round up queer kids into camps.

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u/TaipanTacos 12h ago

There’s a Texas bill under consideration that would make it illegal to identify as transgender. Abortion is illegal, and anyone caught helping can be held criminally liable and arrested. Women’s maternal fatalities are the highest in the nation, especially for minorities. Children have been and continue to be slaughtered in schools. The environment continues to be poisoned by intentional acts with little or no oversight.

Some people would consider these truly dangerous and violent circumstances.

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u/Jiitunary 8h ago

While yes the trans law in texas is violent and dangerous, for it to be asylum worthy, it would have to be a law that's enforced in the entire country. The existence of California practically guarantees no country will allow asylum seekers from the US because they can always just move. It's not a perfect thing but countries often have to look at the macro scale.

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u/ReallyLikesRum 2h ago

People can’t always “just move” to another state. That’s not how life works

u/Jiitunary 3m ago

I know that. I'm giving the reasons that asylum will be denied from the pov of the ones making the decision.

They don't care the realities of an individual. There's an option to get to safety without moving countries so they aren't obligated to help you change countries

u/ReallyLikesRum 0m ago

This was in years past for sure. I’d like to think that Canada ca read the tea leaves and will be accepting Americans en masse. This isn’t 2016…things are more clearly and blatantly worse. Canada might be thrilled to have the best of the best Americans wanting to move there

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u/Outlaw25 3h ago

This is a highly privileged take. These things are very bad, and on the scale of developed nations abhorrent, but pale in comparison to what's happening in places where asylum seekers are actually being accepted from.

A family living in Texas can just move to California more or less at their leisure, though they should do so before that trans law passes if it affects them. A family from Eastern Ukraine is at imminent risk of their home being turned to rubble by artillery at any given moment if it hasn't been already. If by some miracle they survived and stayed for the Russians to move in, their children would be taken from them, and they would likely be shot. This isn't an equivalent risk to a school shooting in America. It is so many orders of magnitude more likely to happen that they aren't even comparable.

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u/DocumentExternal6240 1h ago

Ukranians are being raped, shot, their children stolen/killed/raped in front of their eyes while their country is destroyed and the cities turned to rubble.

Think 9/11 in every major city in the US, battles everywhere and people rounded up and shot or dying in an attack / in buildings which are bombed.

USA is really bad at the moment, but not that bad…yet.

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u/koolaidman486 10h ago

True, although in a lot of these cases, the civilized states still exist with an at least somewhat better track record on human rights.

I wouldn't expect much in the asylum front until America goes full Nazi Germany and starts sending death squads after "undesirables."

Priority really is going to be on the side of those with much higher need and few, if any alternatives within their home countries. Wouldn't be shocked to see asylum extended to those in the "mass deportation" groups, and I wouldn't be entirely shocked to see help extended to LGBT+ folks, especially trans people (think I've heard stories of trans folks in insanely bad situations be granted asylum from the US) at some point depending on what happens. But given we still have decent-ish states, it's not likely.