It’s Time to Mobilize Resources for People Fleeing the US
Some of us have seen the writing on the wall for years, and finally figured out a way to leave.
Elizabeth Silleck La Rue
4/24/20232 min read
In Spirit, At Least, Black and LGBTQ People in the US Could Be Considered Refugees
“I’m moving to Canada,” joked white straight cisgendered liberals when it was reported in 2016 that Trump was taking the White House.
A tongue-in-cheek, vague fantasy that most didn’t intend to really follow through on. A recognition that the United States was on an anti-democratic, downward trajectory that most politicos didn’t take seriously enough.
Now, seven years later, the United States of America is arguably headed deeper — perhaps irrevocably — into a pit of civic deterioration, nationwide threat of racial and political persecution, and wholly unpredictable and unavoidable violence.
Some of us have seen the writing on the wall for years, and finally figured out a way to leave.
As bodies pile up and new fascist laws chip diligently away at human rights, others are realizing it’s time to go, but they do not have the resources to emigrate.
Putting aside the fact that the US is chronically failing to follow its own asylum laws (demonstrative, in fact, of the US’s crisis of conscience), there are various groups of US residents who are currently targeted within the US who would, in spirit, qualify as refugees according to the law.
According to 8 USC 1101(a), “The term “refugee” means (A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality … and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion . . . .” (emphasis added)
The law goes on to specify other parameters, and there are a number of prohibitions which would rule out an asylum claim. Obviously, the first line itself requires a “refugee” to be outside of their home country to qualify for asylum, which would exclude anyone currently in the US watching the bodies pile up and new fascist laws chip diligently away at their human rights from leveraging this definition in a strict sense to claim that they should be considered a refugee. In any event, if we were dealing with legal asylum claims here, we would be looking to the laws of the receiving country to determine status.