Originally published at: Canada issues travel warning about U.S. states with new anti-LGBTQ+ laws | Boing Boing
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A travel advisory is nice and all, but what Canada really needs to be doing is opening up to refugees from countries that don’t “have the same values and legal system” on this.
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Perhaps an insufficient slice of economic pie but one can at least hope that measures like these will notably hit the tourist revenue in those medievalist states. And then the filthy lucre sect will confront, to a degree, the christofascist division.
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In a capitalistic, oligarchic society, money speaks louder than votes, so here’s hoping!
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Unfortunately the billionaire fascists overlords have enough money and access to propaganda spewing “news” organizations to completely pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible. Even the smaller business owners who are disproportionally impacted.
“But, but, it is those people who are hurting you!”
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FYI here’s the travel advice page for the United States. Skimming through it I found a number of items or sections that depressed me a bit (Gun Violence, Terrorism, and the fact that the Health section called out measles and fucking polio. We’ve had a polio vaccine since the 1950s or 1960s for Pete’s sake!)
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It does.
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yep…
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It’s not just LGBTQ people, it will be their families, friends, allies in general. I know many Canadians LGBTQ or not, who have pretty much given up on the US. If it’s not anti-LGBTQ laws, it’s guns.
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. I was really disappointed when Trudeau doubled down on the Safe Third Country agreement, which is a bullshit legal fiction that basically closes the door to treating queer Americans as refugees and does nothing except protect American xenophobia in all forms.
That the same government can say no American queers getting refugee status and then declare a travel advisory at the same time is très frustrating.
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Not if you’re American, though. Canada won’t grant refugee status to people deemed to be coming from “another country that is already safe”. So if you fled persecution in Sudan and came to America first, Canada won’t take you. Or if you’re American to begin with, Canada won’t consider you a refugee. This is the Safe Third Country treaty, and it’s horseshit. Its purpose is to appease America’s desire to lock the doors from the outside to hold its own people in.
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Oh yeah that part. Good point that I forgot about.
The safe third party agreement has some questonable supporting points about why America is safe.
Yeah these don’t sound so true nowadays…
Factor 1: Whether the United States is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1984 Convention Against Torture
- The United States is signatory of two international treaties that provide protection to people fearing persecution or at risk of torture in their countries of origin: the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, and the 1984 Convention Against Torture.
Factor 3: Human rights record of the United States
- The United States meets a high standard with respect to the protection of human rights. It is an open democracy with independent courts, separation of powers and constitutional guarantees of essential human rights and fundamental freedoms.
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Yah, totally. It’s based on an outdated idea of what America is or thinks it is. That’s why when it came up for review a few months ago and Trudeau strengthed it, I flipped every table in my house. I wonder if new tables are tax deductible? They should be since it’s a political expense. 
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Random fun fact about America’s desire to lock the doors from the outside- at a lot of land border crossings that aren’t 24h, the Canadian and American sides have different hours (the Canadian side is generally open longer hours). The Americans close the gates on their side because they close earlier, but they put gates across both sides even though there’s no checkpoint on the northbound side for them (because why would there be?). They literally don’t let people leave. It’s dark and bizarre behaviour that shows up everywhere in US foreign policy when you start looking. See also IRS tax citizenship being separate from political citizenship, taxing of expats, and the Byzantine process for renouncing US citizenship. America wants to make sure nobody can ever leave in many ways.
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Other countries should also warn their people to be careful traveling in USA forced-birth states while pregnant. An unexpected problem could turn into a medical disaster when doctors refuse to perform essential treatments from fear of fines, imprisonment, and loss of license under the ambiguous new laws. Even a stopover in one of these states could cause dire penalties under these laws in some states.
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US behaviour at Borders is “interesting”.
When I used to work in Seattle I would return to Vancouver for the weekend, and would often hit a US police / immigration checkpoint right before the Canadian agents. They would ask me all the questions I would normally get at the border and check my passport before I was allowed to cross the physical border and get the the Canadian agents.
That never felt like something that was being done to help anyone…
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I hear that. I cross the border about once a week for various non-work reasons and the US guys are inexplicably massive dicks to me about 50% of the time. I had an American(!) friend come visit and on her way back through, they asked her how she knew me. She said we met on the internet (which is technically true, but we’ve been best friends for ten years). They interpreted that as “this woman is an international sex worker” and proceeded to harass her for twenty minutes about being a hooker. My friend was in tears by the time they let her through.
I have also sat through multiple twenty minute lectures about what a communist hellhole Canada is and why would I want to live there, etc.
On the Canadian side, they are 100% professional and courteous 100% of the time. The difference is very very stark.
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Most times I renewed my TN visa (no path to immigration, used to be a yearly renewal) I would get the lecture and confused question of why I didn’t want to move to the States. Some people just couldn’t grasp why you would want to live anywhere else 
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If you’re from the USA the Safe Third Country Agreement isn’t applicable, there’s literally no “third country” involved. Yes, this agreement sucks balls and shouldn’t exist but it doesn’t come into play at all when you’re talking about US citizens attempting to claim refugee status in Canada.
In cases like this (US LGBT refugee claimants) technically they’re not eligible because there are still “safe” states within the US and Canada’s refugee policy favours not accepting claimants who can reasonably arrive at a safe place via internal migration within their own country. Obviously with smaller countries with a more uniform legal landscape this tends not to really come up as a factor but those same rules do theoretically apply regardless of country of origin.
If you say so, but the trans group that tried to get a group of American trans people refugee status was denied with the Safe Third Country treaty being cited. It’s also the reason they gave for closing the Roxham Road loophole for Americans who tried to use it.
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