Ter Apel, a small, unassuming Dutch town near the German border, is a place tourists rarely have on their itinerary. There are no lovely old windmills, no cannabis-filled coffee shops and on a recent visit it was far too early for tulip season.
When foreigners end up there, it is for one reason: to claim asylum at the Netherlands’ biggest refugee camp, home to 2,000 desperate people from all around the world.
Many of the American refugees, like Jane-Michelle Arc, a 47-year-old software engineer from San Francisco, are transgender. In April last year she flew into Schiphol airport in Amsterdam and, sobbing, asked a customs officer how to claim asylum. “And they laughed because: what’s this big dumb American doing here asking about asylum? And then they realised I was serious.”
Arc said the US had become such a hostile environment for trans people that she had stopped leaving the house “unless there was an Uber waiting outside”. She said she had been abused on the street and using the ladies’ toilets, and resolved to leave the country after a frightening incident when she feared a woman was going to run her over with her truck.
No, you are demanding that I say that in order for her to ‘deserve’ asylum. I’m saying ‘are they literally in Saudi Arabia?’ is a shit standard.
If someone’s life is threatened because of where they live, they should be able to apply for asylum.
Again, do you believe that someone is likely to survive being run over by a truck? Her life has already been endangered, you just don’t take that danger seriously because it happened in San Francisco.
I believe the chances of getting run over by a truck are less than the certainty of getting executed.
I was pretty clear. How deadly the truck is has no importance, it’s how likely it is to happen.
The standard is a gradient depending on how likely you are to lose your life or come to serious harm imo. How likely, not if it’s remotely possible.
‘Oh well I just don’t believe it could happen’ is the extent of the evidence you’ve given, while I’ve shown violent hate crimes are rising against transgender people in CA and that this specific woman had a murder attempt made against her. Stop wasting my time unless you have something more substantial to say than ‘well it’s not Saudi Arabia you know.’
Your stats about hate crimes (102 anti-trans hate crimes in a city of 3.9 million) don’t amount to much when taking into account the 3/4 of the middle east that encourages them, and their hate crimes usually end up in a hate mob hate burning someone to death.
She was also frightened the person was going to run her over, there is never a clear mention of an attempt. You can’t compare that to Sudan and their civil war for example.
Idk, when I hear refugee, fleeing the country comes to mind and there’s a clear danger. I just don’t see it at this time. Like, there’s a problem but there’s also trans hotlines and help groups, resources and ways to escape inside the country from even the worst of places. There’s no gay hotline in Iran. There’s no “I snitched on the cartels” help groups in Mexico. We are talking about vastly different worlds and dangers here.