#Refugee Asylum

[ceevee5]

[kavumas-blog]

My Life as a Queer Refugee: A Story of Struggle, Survival, and Hope

As a queer person, I once believed I could live authentically in my home country. But as I came out, everything changed. What I thought was a community that might support me turned against me, and I found myself in danger, rejected by family, friends, and society. Forced to flee my home to seek safety, I traveled to Kenya hoping for asylum, only to face even more hardship. Now, living in yet another country, I continue to struggle, not only with the trauma of being a refugee but with the daily fight to survive as a queer person.

My journey as a queer refugee has been one of immense pain and loss. When I left my country, I was running from violence—both physical and emotional. In Kenya, I hoped to find protection and safety, but what I encountered was indifference and exclusion. I wasn’t safe there either. Once again, I had to flee, moving to a neighboring country in search of refuge, but the discrimination followed me.

Living as a refugee is already incredibly difficult. The lack of basic necessities—food, medication, housing—is a constant strain. But being queer adds another layer of struggle. I often find myself isolated, marginalized by both the community I seek to integrate with and the very system that is supposed to protect me. There is no safety net, and the fear of violence or rejection is a constant presence in my life.

The systems in place often fail us. Many refugees are denied the support they desperately need, not because they aren’t worthy, but because their identities—especially their queer identities—make them vulnerable to further discrimination. The global refugee system has not yet adequately addressed the unique needs of LGBTQ+ refugees, and this is why the suffering continues.

What’s worse is that it’s not just about the physical survival—it's about the emotional toll it takes. Every day I fight to exist as myself, but too often, the world makes it feel like that’s a fight I can’t win. My story is not unique. There are countless queer refugees who face the same struggles of survival and the constant question: "Where can I go to be safe?"

But there is hope. This struggle is not just mine—it's shared by many, and it’s through awareness and action that we can make a difference. We need to advocate for better protections for queer refugees, for policies that take our unique struggles into account. We need organizations to provide not just shelter, but the mental and emotional support necessary for survival. And we need the wider public to open their hearts, understand our pain, and help us amplify our voices.

I urge you, if you’re reading this, to take action. Donate to my fundraiser. Advocate for policies that protect us, and raise awareness about the discrimination we face. Share our stories—let us be heard. The world must understand that queer refugees are not just statistics, but human beings fighting for the right to live openly and safely.

The fight is ongoing, but with support, it’s one we can win. I am more than my struggle, and together, we can ensure that every queer refugee has the chance to live without fear, to be themselves fully, and to survive with dignity.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Immigration Minister Marc Miller says Palestinians who have fled Gaza will receive transitional financial assistance and supports after they arrive in Canada. The Immigration Department says the funds will help cover basic needs, such as shelter, food and clothing, with more details to be shared at a later date. The government also will offer temporary health coverage for three months, settlement services such as language training, and the ability to apply for study and open work permits without fees. The assistance will be available to Palestinians who fled the conflict in Gaza, regardless of whether they came to Canada via the special temporary immigration pathway for extended family or as regular temporary residents.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[graculusdraws]

[chamerionwrites]

President Biden issued an executive order on Tuesday that prevents migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border when crossings surge, a dramatic election-year move to ease pressure on the immigration system and address a major concern among voters.

The measure is the most restrictive border policy instituted by Mr. Biden, or any other modern Democrat, and echoes an effort in 2018 by President Donald J. Trump to cut off migration that was blocked in federal court.

In remarks at the White House, Mr. Biden said he was forced to take executive action because Republicans had blocked bipartisan legislation that had some of the most significant border security restrictions Congress had considered in years.

“We must face a simple truth,” said the president, who was joined by a group of lawmakers and mayors from border communities. “To protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants, we must first secure the border and secure it now.”

Aware that the policy raised uncomfortable comparisons, Mr. Biden took pains to distinguish his actions from those of Mr. Trump. “We continue to work closely with our Mexican neighbors instead of attacking them,” Mr. Biden said. He said he would never refer to immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the country, as Mr. Trump has done.

Still, the move shows how drastically the politics of immigration have shifted to the right in the United States. Polls suggest there is support in both parties for border measures once denounced by Democrats and championed by Mr. Trump as the number of people crossing into the country has reached record levels in recent years.

The restrictions kick in once the seven-day average for illegal crossings hits 2,500 per day. Daily totals already exceed that number, which means that Mr. Biden’s executive order could go into effect right away — allowing border officers to return migrants across the border into Mexico or to their home countries within hours or days.

Typically, migrants who cross illegally and claim asylum are released into the United States to wait for court appearances, where they can plead their cases. But a huge backlog means those cases can take years to come up.

The new system is designed to deter those illegal crossings.

The border would reopen to asylum seekers only when the number of crossings falls significantly. The figure would have to stay below a daily average of 1,500 for seven days in a row. The border would reopen to migrants two weeks after that.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it planned to challenge the executive action in court.

“The administration has left us little choice but to sue,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer at the A.C.L.U, which led the charge against the Trump administration’s attempt to block asylum in 2018 and resulted in the policy being stopped by federal courts. “It was unlawful under Trump and is no less illegal now.”

There would be limited exceptions to the restrictions announced Tuesday, including for minors who cross the border alone, victims of human trafficking and those who use a Customs and Border Protection app to schedule an appointment with a border officer to request asylum.

But for the most part, the order suspends longtime guarantees that give anyone who steps onto U.S. soil the right to seek a safe haven.

The executive action mirrors the legislation that Republicans blocked in February, saying it was not strong enough. Many of them, egged on by Mr. Trump, were loath to give Mr. Biden a legislative victory in an election year.

“Donald Trump begged them to vote ‘no’ because he was worried that more border enforcement would hurt him politically,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said in a statement on Tuesday. He added: “The American people want bipartisan solutions to border security — not cynical politics.”

Immigration advocates and some progressive Democrats have expressed concern that Mr. Biden was abandoning his promise to rebuild the asylum system.

“By reviving Trump’s asylum ban, President Biden has undermined American values and abandoned our nation’s obligations to provide people fleeing persecution, violence, and authoritarianism with an opportunity to seek refuge in the U.S.,” said Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California.

Tuesday’s decision is a stark turnaround for Mr. Biden, who came into office attacking Mr. Trump for his efforts to restrict asylum. During a 2019 debate, Mr. Biden, then a candidate running against Mr. Trump for the first time, excoriated his rival’s policies.

“This is the first president in the history of the United States of America that anybody seeking asylum has to do it in another country,” Mr. Biden said at the time.

[reasonsforhope]

“America likes to tell a certain story about itself: It’s a safe haven, a place of refuge for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It’s a story that history shows hasn’t always been true. But thankfully, it just got easier for Americans to take matters into their own hands and turn that aspiration into a reality.

The Biden administration on January 19 launched the Welcome Corps, a new program that will allow groups of Americans to directly sponsor refugees to resettle in their communities.

Whereas recent programs have focused on bringing over people from specific places — Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela — this program makes it possible for private citizens to resettle people from any place in the world, so long as they are refugees as defined by the US Refugee Act.

Under the Welcome Corps program, you and a few of your friends can pool together funds to provide an immigration pathway that allows vulnerable people who may not otherwise be able to immigrate the ability to rebuild their lives in the US. Forming a private sponsor group involves bringing together at least five adults in your area and collectively raising $2,275 for each person you want to resettle in your community. With that money, sponsors commit to helping them through the first three months there, which can include securing and furnishing housing, stocking the pantry with food, supporting job hunts, and registering kids for school.

It’s a powerful way to improve life for the newcomers, granting them protection from persecution or violence in their country of origin, plus the chance to access health care, education, and socioeconomic opportunities. It can also improve life for everyone who’ll be in the newcomers’ orbit, including you and your neighbors. Research suggests welcoming refugees will likely benefit your community as a whole, for example by opening new businesses that revitalize neighborhoods. In Canada, a similar private sponsorship program has proven immensely popular and successful over the past decade.

But you might be thinking: Why should it fall to private citizens to fork over the cash, time, and energy to resettle refugees? Shouldn’t that be the government’s job?

...It’s a fair point: This is the government’s job. That’s why the advocacy groups that pushed for the Welcome Corps program insisted that any refugees who come to the US via private sponsorship should be in addition to the number of traditional, government-assisted resettlement cases.

The State Department has signaled that it agrees. This means that by sponsoring a refugee, you can play a role in allowing the US to take in more refugees overall. It really is additive.

And unlike prior programs for Afghans or Ukrainians, which were temporary, ad hoc responses to crises, the Welcome Corps is intended to be a permanent fixture. The hope is that it’ll complement the traditional resettlement process, which has been struggling for years.”

-via Vox, 1/27/23

[beauty-funny-trippy]

JD Vance told a crowd that he will continue to describe Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio, as “illegal aliens” even though they are in the country legally. The Republican audience gave him a round of applause for telling them lies. Why? Because even racists don't want to think of themselves as racist, so they search for any sort of justification (even a lie) for hating a group of people whose skin is a different color than their own. Which is why, even when immigrants are here legally, they still vilify them. So we know it's not about illegal immigration. It's about racism. Racism is what's driving the Republican Party right now. Don't believe me? Well, just imagine what would happen if none of the racists in America voted this November. Harris would win in a landslide.

[stackslip]

As of yet, nations are not challenging the Refugee Convention directly, even as they move to scale back and even nullify its protections. In this environment, nations that sit between the world’s richest countries and its poorest and most war-torn can offer a valuable service as buffers and border guards. Every asylum-seeker that Greece pushes back is one that Germany never needs to worry about accommodating.

Though a climatically and politically unstable world does mean more refugees, the global attack on asylum is not a byproduct of overwhelming immigration. Japan, for example, tightened its policy in June by making it easier to deport asylum-seekers, although the restrictive country only awarded refugee status to 303 people in 2024, which was still a national record. A few hundred people in a population of over 100 million can’t pose any real burden on the country’s resources; the problem is with the principle that people are entitled to flee hardship and seek refuge. The goal is to whittle a right into a rare privilege.

To accomplish that, the West has to find ways to make seeking asylum even less appealing and more dangerous than the wars and disasters people are fleeing in the first place. Authorities must invent new cruelties to administer, cook up new nightmares to visit on the world’s most desperate. With their masks and knives and beatings, the Hellenic Coast Guard leads the way.

“There is a huge amount to learn from the Greek authorities and the Greek government in terms of the approach that they’ve taken towards illegal migration,” United Kingdom Home Secretary Suella Braverman told the press after a guided tour of coast guard operations on Samos, an island notorious for drift-backs. In April, the day after the U.K. passed a new policy that involves deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda, five people drowned in the English Channel on their way to Britain, including a child.

As far as rich countries are concerned, these drownings are not a problem — they are a model policy solution. So if you want an image of the future, imagine a masked man kidnapping a child, putting her on a raft, and shoving it into the open sea, over and over and over again.

[odinsblog]

Different red state, same old Republican bullshit.

Republicans and Ron DeSantis are on a mission to turn Florida into a shithole state with an oceanfront view.

[ceevee5]

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Two Toronto churches say they've been forced to close their doors to refugee claimants seeking shelter after housing hundreds of asylum seekers since last summer. Pilgrim Feast Tabernacles in Etobicoke and Dominion Church International in North York have shut down their shelter operations for asylum seekers in the past two weeks largely due to financial difficulties but are exploring alternative options to continue meeting the rising demand. "We are grateful for donations. A lot of donations have been coming in. But with time, people stopped giving money," said Pastor Eddie Jjumba, who's been overseeing the makeshift refugee shelter at Dominion Church International, adding volunteers can't afford to buy food or services like garbage removal and cleaning. "We have come to a point where we are practically not able to afford those things."

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Tagging @politicsofcanada

[notvv0ltz]

UPDATE: we're in safe place now. Share this petition instead:

❗️🏳️‍⚧️ WHOA OUR COUNTRY WANTS US DEAD

THIS IS AN EMERGENCY.... LIKE FOR REALS..... I hate Russia so fucking much they pulled out a new-baked trans genocide law. Please help us, a queer family, to become refugees and fly to Germany in an attempt to get an asylum

Government is preparing a new law for us, which is... literally ban of every kind of help to transition and adapt in society. People WON'T be able to change their IDs, go through HRT and gender affirmative surgeries. Also russian propagandists started to talk about us much more on TV, they frame us and The Gays as a public enemy #1. Think how many are going to lose homes, jobs and sent to conversion therapists and commit suicide (suicide rates in Russia are high already, and I'm talking about people in general, not just trans people)

To say that I'm devastated is an understatement. I'm in a fucking terror. They just want us dead OFFICIALLY. We have nothing to do in this country anymore, we have to run away and become refugees. Now for realz guys. I want me and 4 people who are very dear to me and are the reason why am I still alive to get out here.

I tried to contact with my blood relatives and ask for financial help (spoiler alert they're an upper middle class), all of them fucking told me "to get therapy" because they truly believe that I'm trans because of internal misogyny. That "I got bullied so much by the boys, so I decided to become like them so they won't anymore" as my mom told me. She is the same person who believes that gay people are funded by The New World Order (TV is that brainrotting folks). "I won't give you anything even if I had it" - my sister told me. Jesus fucking christ I'm so tired of everything.

So with that being said, please share this journal (it's by my friend and roommate, he's tracking donations) or/and donate, we have to earn a lot this time: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10581244/