Documents For Your Bugout Bag

Everyone should make a document bugout bag. This should be part of your physical bugout bag. This allows you and your family to move efficiently across borders, here’s a comprehensive list to ensure you’re prepared. These documents cover the most critical, helpful, and non-vital but beneficial items to include. Below is a list that you can check off as you go collecting these documents. This list is ideal. Do not get obsessed with gathering every one of these documents at the expense of getting out.

Most important:
☐ Birth Records (Long form or extended form and get it with apostilles ☐)
☐ Marriage and divorce records (With an apostille ☐) If you have been living with someone over 6 months and are in a relationship but not married have a copy of a joint lease or be able to show shared assets.
☐ Family court order (where only one parent has full custody of the child)
☐ Name change court order (if you have changed your name)
☐ Passport(s) (Make sure to get it with extra pages in the passport I recommend a passport card also. Most countries require you to have 6 months of validity also at least 2 free pages)

Less important but still very good to have:
☐ Birth record of your father
☐ Marriage record of your father & mother
☐ Marriage/divorce record of your father & mother
☐ Death record of your father
☐ Birth record of your mother
☐ Death record of your mother
☐ Flash drive with the above and below documents scan on to.

Non vital documents that are good to have:

IDs:
☐  Global Entry Card (Entry into the US, Canada and Mexico easily)
☐  APEC card (Entry into the Asia-Pacific area easily)
☐  State ID or Driver’s license (If in the USA renewing apply for an enhanced ID or license if they do not offer that then a Real ID)
☐  Passport card or EU ID (this lets you travel by land/sea internationally EU ID can also be air but not the passport card)
☐  Translation of Driver’s license (This is only good for a year if in the US or up to three years in other countries so it’s better to get it when you have hard plans to leave the country you can get it from AAA even if the country does not require it some companies might when you try to rent a car like https://www.ouicar.com/ in France)

Education documents:
☐  Degree Official copy from the school. (This should be your highest completed education. This needs to be notarized then have an apostille attached to the notarized document.)
☐  Transcripts (This should be from your highest education even if you did not completed the program. This needs to be notarized then have an apostille attached to the notarized document.)
☐  Copy of your certifications / Licenses

Visa helpful documents:
☐ Visa/Passport photos (At least a set of two. This is needed for passports, visas, drivers license)
☐ Digital copy of passport photos (https://tsg.phototool.state.gov/photo)
☐ Copy of your resume/CV
☐ Color copy of your passport printed out
☐ Copy of lease or deed to the house you live in
☐ Copy of the title to any car or boat (proof of ties to your current country is needed for a lot of visas)
☐ Utility bills in your name for the last year (each month you should have a pdf)
☐ Bank statements for the last year (each month you should be able to generate a pdf of the bank statement)
☐ W2 for the last year
☐ Tax filing of last year
☐ A letter of employment

Other helpful documents:
☐  Ham Radio License (If you are a general or higher a number of countries will let you operate. You might need additional documents along with a translation.)
☐  COVID vaccination card
☐  Medical Records (If you request it for personal use and it can cost some money to get these records. Your doctor could request them for free but they might not with the other office being out of the country. Your doctor could delete your medical records if you have not seen them for X amount of time, X time changes by country and state by state in the US.)
☐  Copy of your Medical Insurance card
☐  Religious Records (This can be helpful in Israel’s Right of Return law or if your government can’t locate a birth, marriage or death record.)
☐  Car Insurance cancellation Statement (This is a statement from your car insurance to show the number of years you have been a customer and how many claims you have made. Some companies call this a loss history report. The longer you can show no losses the better your rating will be.)
☐  Copy of your transit card(s)

Tip: Keep these documents well-organized, and consider waterproof, secure storage solutions for the physical copies. Digital backups should be encrypted and stored safely to prevent unauthorized access.

Tip: If you are traveling to a different country under cover of tourism or vacation, do not carry all these documents with you. It will not conform to your cover story. Instead give them to a friend to be shipped to you at your destination.

Post Election Assistance to the USA

It’s happened, and Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States, with all that means for trans Americans.

We wish we could offer all of you one of our individual consultations to help you form a plan to get out. But we’re not going to be able to do that.  Since the election was called, less than 3 days ago as we write this, we have received 130 requests for consults, and we expect the number to continue to grow. That’s far more than we can handle in a timely manner.  So we are offering different services during this time.

Email. If you have emailed us asking for a 1 on 1 consultation, we are going to try to read every email you have sent. If we think a question won’t be covered by our other services, we’ll respond with an individual email besides our mail merge email. We continue to be reachable for questions at

usa-campaign@transrescue.org

but please attend one of our YouTube sessions first.

Streams We are going to be having a series of YouTube streams. Anyone can participate in these, and there will be a way to ask questions and have them answered.  Some of these will be general information, and some will be on specific topics. We recommend first attending one of the general sessions, and then the one on a specific topic. There is a calendar embedded in this page below with times. We will record the live streams.

This is the link for the YouTube live stream.

Can’t make the live stream? The recorded sessions are here.

Office Hours. We will be having office hours. You can show up on an open Google Meet and talk with one of our staff.  We ask everyone to first participate in one of our YouTube streams, as space in office hours is limited and better used for questions not handled by the presentations. Here’s the link for the office hours. See the calendar below for times:

Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/fez-emmc-ryy
Or dial: 617-675-4444   PIN: 485 383 284 2751#
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/fez-emmc-ryy?pin=4853832842751

Mutual Aid. We are organizing mutual aid resources, both in and outside the USA.  We are collecting names of those who have a sofa and will host a trans person, those who can give you a spot in the outbuilding on their farm, those who can drive you to a border, and so on. If you can offer such resources, email volunteer@transrescue.org

Fifth, we are publishing more information all the time. Check out our website, particularly this article (bit dated, but still valid), our YouTube channel, and follow us on Mastodon @trans_rescue@mastodon.social. We still also have a presence on the bird site as @Trans_Rescue .

What to know up front

The situation is not hopeless. Of the roughly 80 Americans we’ve spoken with in consults before the election, we were able to help all of them come up with a realistic plan to get out.

You need a passport. If you don’t have one, it’s the first step. If you haven’t applied, we suggest attending a help webinar first. We will have some info about how to best apply in the current situation. If you can’t afford one, attend our session on leaving while poor.

We cannot give you money to help you leave. We continue to help people in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other incredibly deadly places. We believe anyone can leave, regardless of financial circumstance, on their own. We will have a special session addressing getting out if you have little or no money.

Many of you have written to us about asylum options. Asylum is not a realistic option for leaving. Conditions for trans people in the USA at this time do not support an asylum claim.  We will have a special event on asylum, but the TL;DR is it’s mostly unrealistic.

Sending us material about what you think will happen in the USA is not helpful. We’re not interested in predicting the future. We help people leave.

We are in the Netherlands. We would love to do more sessions at evening time, but this means being up at 3am for us. We feel being coherent is important during these broadcasts.

We will have a special session on dealing with disability and disability payments. We’re struggling to find someone who can speak with authority on this issue.

Special Sessions –

See calendar for times.

Volunteer tourism – Nov 15 – a way to drastically cut the cost of living outside the USA.

Canada – Nov 17 – Canadian visa options

DAFT treaty visa and remote worker visas – Nov 18 – The Netherlands has an attractive visa program for Americans who can deposit 5500$ in an account and leave it and have a college degree or extensive job experience and will start a business (usually a consultancy) in the Netherlands.

Getting out with few financial resources  –  Nov 19 – We think everybody can get out. Even if you’re not sure how you’ll pay the rent next month.   DATE CHANGED – Now on Google Meet.

Volunteer Tourism – Nov 20 – This option combines work and a holiday. This is a popular option for cis young people, but is increasingly a way to increase mobility for folks around the world.  DATE CHANGED

Citizenship by investment or heritage – Nov 22 – If you have ancestors from somewhere else, within 3-4 generations but especially within 1 or 2, you may be eligible for citizenship there. If you have equity in a home or own a business you may be able to move the investment and be given citizenship where you move.

Disability – Nov 25 – untangling the complexities of moving when you are in the disability benefits system, or being disabled makes things more complex.

Session Calendar

This calendar is on Pacific time (Los Angeles)

 

2024 US Election

A dark cloud has fallen over America, and it may be many years before it is lifted. The moment we all dreaded has arrived, the Presidential election has been called for Donald Trump.

Trump’s supporters will undoubtedly act as though he is already president, and we expect in the immediate future they will act in the expectation that he will pardon any of their actions against people perceived as his enemies. We have already seen what MAGA followers were capable of on January 6th 2021, so we expect that their actions will be lawless. They have been primed for years to see trans people as the scapegoat for America’s problems, and as they search for victims it’s possible they might pick on their nearest one.

We Americans in the west’s vast spaces stop to help travelers broken down far from town. We have faith that many of our fellow Americans will, in the end, help us in our time of need. You will find among your fellow citizens those who will respect and protect you, but think about your day-to-day security, and act accordingly.

The one bright side is that, though Trump may have won the election it’s worth remembering that the Biden presidency lasts until the 20th of January. Between now and the inauguration there may be an increasing level of danger, but after that the conditions are certain to worsen precipitously.  We believe that a Trump presidency will end any notion of safe states or of sanctuary cities, and thus our advice remains that if at all possible, as a trans person you should consider leaving the USA. Ideally you should do this before January 20.

We have written at length about planning an exit, and we know that doing so in such a short time will necessitate some difficult choices. How you consider these is up to you, but start by getting yourself a passport if you don’t already have one. Then formulate your plan, whether it be getting on a plane or crossing a border, and once the document arrives, enact it. We know not everyone will escape the new American dictatorship, but we hope you can be one of those who does.

Good luck.

Closing Intake

We have ever more people seeking our help.

When we don’t feel like we can help the ‘average’ passenger within about 90 days, we feel it’s unfair to the passenger to tell them we are going to get them out or assure them they are somewhere in a who-knows-how-long waiting list.

We are now at that 90 day limit.  We are going to concentrate on getting passengers currently in the system to final destinations.

We are still happy to talk with you about your own extraction plans – whether that is from North Africa or the USA. We offer free consultation sessions with any trans person who feels their country or surroundings are unsafe or likely to become unsafe. For example, if you are in a gulf state but have funds, and just need expertise how to arrange to flee or help like an outside helper to file paperwork, contact us.

We continue to offer our “consult” sessions to help plan how to get out of the UK, USA, or other countries of new concern. If you would like one of these, email consult@transrescue.org with your time zone and a suggested time. Bear in mind we are in the Netherlands (we got outta the USA early).

If you are in a dangerous situation where you have a very limited time to get out, or see an opportunity to flee and need help NOW, email annie+intake@transrescue.org

This post will be removed when we re-open intake.

Review Of the Year: 2023

It’s been a hectic but transformative year for Trans Rescue with a lot of stress and plenty of ups and downs, but we’ve come through it and we’re delighted to be able to say that with your help we’ve been able to help over 140 people to safety so far in 2023.

In this review we’re bringing you the work we’ve done this year, something on the passengers we have in transit, some good news about passengers who’ve made it to safety, and news of our upcoming campaigns. Keep reading, and find out what we’ve been up to.

America

The USA flag with a calendar page showing the 5th of November 2024, and a banner at the top saying "US Presidential Election".
It’s less than a year now to the US Presidential election. Flag image: Mrrebel1453, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The original impetus behind the formation of our predecessor organisation TransEmigrate was to provide support for American trans people in escaping the increasing number of anti-trans laws in the USA creating a hostile environment in which to be trans. With just over a year until the next US Presidential election we have returned to this topic, launching a campaign to equip American trans people with the support and knowledge they need to reach safety.

With an estimated 1.6 million transgender Americans their numbers are too large for us to help each of them individually. However, because an American passport remains one of the strongest in the world trans American’s needs are very different from the people in developing countries who have occupied much of our attention until now.

Our campaign has started by persuading American trans people to apply for a passport, and will continue by helping them explore the escape options available in the likely event of a far-right government. Without this work we think escape will only be a realistic option for the wealthy, so our aim is to lower the hurdles to the point at which it becomes practical for many more. There are a huge number of American trans people who we think can get themselves out if they have the right information and encouragement, these are the target audience we are trying to reach.

East Africa

Daily Monitor headline: "We shall not accept gays, says Kaziimba"
The deteriorating situation Uganda, summarised in a headline.

By far our biggest operation this year started in the spring, when we found ourselves the only outside LGBT organization with access to a network on the ground in Uganda as the government there enacted a series of measures criminalizing LGBT people.

We had an extensive presence in Kenya already, and had helped a few trans people in late 2022 in Uganda. So we were, awkwardly, one of the few global organizations with an existing program in Uganda. This placed us in the position of taking what would turn out to be a prominent position in the movement to help Ugandan LGBT people flee. We were rather a small organization to be doing this.

We obtained a generous 40K Euro grant from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to expand our existing trans haven, Eden house, in Nakuru, Kenya. Sadly, the shelter was raided in August by Kenyan police due to the presence of LGBT people. We divided the residents of Eden House into smaller groups and set up safe houses in other cities.

Annie, our director, took a group of Egyptians who were in the house to Tanzania, while Arya, our shelter manager, took a group of Kenyans to the coast. We established a new, smaller shelter for some of the Ugandans, while others moved in with friends. We have ongoing costs to support those passengers who remain in Kenya.

Having now become the target of the Kenyan police, in the end we had to get most of our staff out of Kenya. Arya had to flee Kenya herself. She’s currently in a third country and we’re attempting to relocate her to a permanent place .

Passengers In Transit

We currently have passengers in transit across several regions of the world, in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Americas. In some cases our role is an advisory one for passengers who are self-funding, we are helping others directly with their extraction, and a few more are being supported by us in mid-journey.

Coming Up

"Why we are sounding the alarm for transgender Americans" superimposed over the "See no evil... " three monkeys.
Our America campaign will include a series of videos on our YouTube channel alongside more grass-roots activities. Monkeys: John Snape, CC BY-SA 3.0.

As we move towards 2024 we’ll be continuing to work on our America campaign, something which is likely to intensify with the progress of their election.

This new project will involve extensive writing, video production and post production work. If any of you have an interest in helping with the campaign in that way, please drop us a note.

Meanwhile we have our existing in-transit passengers to continue on their way, our growing cadre of former passengers to support in various ways, and our continuing work helping new passengers.

A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of an impromptu meeting of five former passengers. In the group most of the former passengers were bright young adults with an impressive array of credentials who will be contributors to the communities in which they now find themselves. This work can be emotionally hard, dangerous, and exhausting, but moments like these keep us going.

We could not do this work without our donors and supporters. We thank you, and we hope that this has given you some ideas of what we have been doing over the last year.

Happy holidays and a happy and safe new year for all of you,

The volunteers of Trans Rescue

Maeen al-Dahbali – Now It Can Be Told

Maeen is a Yemeni cis man who became an anti-child-soldier activist during the earlier years of the Yemeni civil war, subsequently becoming the civil servant with responsibility for child services in the city of Taiz. This made him the enemy of all the warring factions due to his opposition to child recruitment, and he was subsequently imprisoned and tortured. His friends secured his release, and in the year before Trans Rescue was founded Anne helped him escape his hiding place for Egypt, with her own money. This year we were able to help him obtain humanitarian asylum in France, he is now in the French asylum system, and learning French.

Why are we, an organization dedicated to helping transgender people, helping a straight cis man?  When we formed Trans Rescue we asked ourselves what to do with Maeen. We decided trans people were better than that, we weren’t abandoning someone who was in danger because he helped children. What we couldn’t reveal then was that he also performed a vital role for us as our Arabic-speaking man on the ground who helped us considerably with our work. We can not thank him enough for this service and we are thus very pleased to have been able to help him reach safety.

We delayed this report for a while to make sure of his safety.  We last described Maeen when he was still in Egypt.

What They Don’t Want You To Know About How The Asylum System Works

There are some subjects that everyone knows a lot about, but the “knowledge” they have is instead received opinion which bears only a passing resemblance to the truth. As a non-profit which deals with refugees we’re right in the thick of just such a subject, because everybody has a lot of received opinions about asylum seekers. If we had ten dollars for every hot take we’ve heard on the subject we’d probably be better funded, but as it is we’re still operating on a shoestring. So perhaps it’s time to look at the subject from our perspective. We’re not asylum seekers but we deal on a daily basis with the system on a global scale, and we know something about how it works from a first-hand perspective.

First, A Little History

A black and white image of the MS St. Louis, in harbour surrounded by smaller boats.
The MS St. Louis was a ship which transported a complement of Jewish refugees across the Atlantic in 1939, only to be turned back by Cuba and the USA. Many of those onboard died in the holocaust.Public Domain.

So, just why can people claim asylum? The answer to that in today’s form goes back to the years after World War II, when the inconvenient truth for many countries was that before the war they’d turned away people who later became victims of the Nazis. That and the legal status of huge numbers of refugees from the war all across Europe and elsewhere led to the UN adopting the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1951, which defines a refugee and sets out a list of provisions to ensure their protection. The important point to take away from the 1951 convention is that a refugee has the right to claim asylum in a country if they are standing on that country’s soil. This protection was put in place to stop states merely pushing refugees back over their borders, instead they have to process their asylum applications. This forms the basis of the asylum system, however there are other treaties such as the Dublin Regulation which limit so-called asylum shopping around European countries, that modify the framework under which it operates.

A rectangular grey accommodation block ship moored at a pier, viewed from a cliff top.
The Bibby Stockholm is an accommodation barge hired by the British government and moored at Portland to house asylum seekers. Ashley Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0.

A country then has to process the applications of the asylum seekers who arrive, and to do that they stick those people in camps or hostels or asylum seeker centres while they do it. The purpose of processing the application is to determine whether or not the person is a danger, and whether or not they are a genuine refugee, as of course a percentage applying for asylum are under no threat and are just seeking a better life. The problem with all this though is that the process takes a while. It’s not unusual in European countries for someone to spend years in the system without a decision, and thus you’ll find those asylum seeker centres overflowing with people. As an example according to the Refugee Council in the last year the UK has had a shade under 80000 applications, and holds a little over 175000 people awaiting a decision in an array of camps, contracted hotels, and even ships. This in turn becomes something for politicians to make their capital from, and here begins the problem with the way countries deal with asylum seekers.

Why Asylum Seekers Are Great For Politicians

Rishi Sunak at a podium against a dark blue background. On the podium is the message "STOP THE BOATS".
The UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak puts anti-asylum-seeker rhetoric front and centre in his campaigning. UK Prime Minister, CC BY 2.0.

Having tens or hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers in camps is a great tool for politicians, because they can use the prospect of lots of foreigners to scare pearl-clutching middle-class voters and secure their votes. This is universal, whether politicians are left or right, in government or in opposition, they all wave the asylum seeker stick when it suits them. This creates a sense of threat from asylum seekers  in the population that’s way out of proportion to their real numbers, but perhaps more importantly for the asylum seekers themselves it gives the politicians few incentives to do anything about the problem. Put simply, there are votes in having a bunch of asylum seekers to scare people with, but no votes in spending money to deal with them.

All those hot takes build up then, about how the flood of people is unsustainable and the asylum seekers are being given five star accommodation at the expense of hard working people, or that they’re all economic migrants anyway and none of them are real refugees.. It’s compounded by an intentionally-curated lack of understanding of the 1951 convention or the Dublin Regulation, and the inevitable result is a more authoritarian and rightward political shift. It’s not as though something can’t be done about the problem, but it suits the politicians for it to remain.

So. What’s The Fix?

If there’s a fix for the asylum problem then, what is it? Certainly not abandoning parts of the 1951 convention as the British Conservatives are toying with doing, as tinkering with basic human rights law affects everyone, not just the people you don’t like. Instead there are two fairly straightforward policies which can deal with it. The first is to pour money into asylum processing such that it becomes much faster and that economic migrants can be more readily identified, and the second is to invest in overseas aid with the aim of improving the prospects of people who might otherwise try the asylum system as economic migrants. Sadly neither of these can be used to scare voters, so the chances of either of them happening are slim.

We hope then that this piece has given you something to think about. If you hear one of those uninformed hot takes or perhaps you might have been tempted to give one, maybe now you know who really wants you to hold those views. You probably don’t consider yourself a supporter of the far right and neither do your friends, so if you hear anyone tempted by this gateway drug it’s worth knowing something about what lies behind it.

Why We Are Sounding The Alarm For Transgender Americans.

A pair of stolpersteine set in cobblestones, with flowers, a photo of the two Holocaust victims they memorialise, and a folded Belgian flag.
Stolpersteine in Brussels for Berek and Pesah Swiatlowski. Bella Swiatlowski, Public domain.

As a Brit who travels to and from mainland Europe on a regular basis, there’s something of a sobering reminder to be found beneath your feet as you walk around European towns and cities. Every now and then you’ll see a small brass plaque in the pavement, with a name, some dates, and sometimes a place name on it. These are the so-called stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, memorials for the victims of the Holocaust in front of their former homes, and each one bears the name of a Jew or other victim.

Brits and Americans are taught about the Holocaust, in schools, through the testimonies of survivors, and through television and film. Many of us had grandparents who fought or otherwise served in the second world war, and among those were a significant number who saw its effects for themselves. But it didn’t happen at home in the UK or America, so for those of us born long after it happened it still remains difficult to comprehend.

A stolperstein catching the evening sun, in a view down a street.
It happened on this quiet street in a prosperous town. Christian Michelides, CC BY-SA 4.0

In considering the people whose names appear on those stumbling stones, the horror of it all becomes far more immediate than it does when watching a historical documentary. It happened here on this quiet street in a prosperous town, this is not the place of horror far to the east which we’ve been taught to associate with the Holocaust. By the time the Nazis rounded up their victims it was far too late for anybody in Germany or the occupied countries to protest, and of those courageous people who did take action to save Jews from capture, many were themselves caught and sent to their deaths.

The question that’s probably in the minds of most people when struggling to comprehend the Holocaust is this: How could it have happened? The answer doesn’t come in the final act of the victims being rounded up and exterminated, but years earlier. In the relentless Nazi propaganda which polarised an entire population to see Jews as subhuman, but also in the refusal of so many people to understand what was happening. The message from the numbers of Jewish refugees sounding the alarm bells throughout the 1930s was largely ignored, because people preferred instead to believe that it couldn’t be that bad. You are left wondering, how many of the victims of the Holocaust could have been saved, had the countries outside Germany done more about the plight of German Jews in the 1930s?

A selection of anti-trans headlines from American media in early 2023.
The demonisation of transgender people in right-wing American media has been ceaseless.

Given the above it’s not difficult to draw parallels between Germany in the 1930s and the actions of the right wing of US politics here in the 2020s. The demonisation of transgender people in right-wing American media has been ceaseless, and the legislative programme of Republican state lawmakers has demonstrated their resolve to wipe us out in their territories. They are chillingly open about their plans for us under a future Republican presidency, in which near-dictatorial powers would be seized at a federal level to override lawmakers in Democratic so-called safe states. Meanwhile, as in the 1930s, those not directly involved either within America or in other countries choose to ignore the plight of American transgender people, either because they don’t believe it will happen that way, or because they simply don’t care.

So this is why we’re sounding the alarm for trans Americans. There is no magic time machine with which we can go back to 1931 and warn about the Holocaust, but there is still time for transgender Americans to get out. When this is all over, we would prefer not to carry the guilt of having stood idly by while it was happening.

Header image: John Snape, CC BY-SA 3.0.

America’s Slide Towards Fascism: It’s Not To Late To Get Out… Yet.

Though our operations over the last year have had a focus in the developing world, the situation closer to home for us in countries such as the USA has been of significant concern. An inevitable descent into some form of fascism seems all-too-possible, and since we trans people are the scapegoat of the moment it’s not difficult to see where this is going. In case any Americans remain in doubt we’d like to direct them to the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 blueprint for a newly elected Republican president. Entitled  “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”, it sets out a chilling path in which a president gains near-dictatorial powers through abuse of the federal system backed up by a supreme court packed with their yes-men. They can then criminalise being transgender at the federal level and erase us from society, effectively making any “safe states” irrelevant.

"if it’s all left to the last minute as a newly-elected far-right President prepares for his inauguration, only the wealthy trans people will succeed in escaping and the rest will be left for the Republicans to come after"Over the past year then, we’ve urged people to not wait for that end, but to get out while they still can. Our biggest concern is that if it’s all left to the last minute as a newly-elected far-right President prepares for his inauguration, only the wealthy trans people will succeed in escaping and the rest will be left for the Republicans to come after. Unlike many of our passengers who will be denied access to international travel based simply on their nationality, transgender Americans still have one of the most powerful passports in the world. They have options, something that will disappear abruptly when they are criminalised and their documentation is invalidated.

The Only Luxury You Have Is A Bit Of Time

The trouble is, we can only keep saying this and urging people to plan their exit, we can’t airlift every individual trans American to safety as we simply don’t have the resources. We’ve taken some grief for this, as people shoot the messenger rather than listening to the message. It comes down to this, getting out in some form is not out of reach when you have the luxury of time, but as the time becomes more limited, so does the chance of escaping.

An American passport, over a map.
There’s a lot of nationalistic guff about this document representing freedom, but curiously for trans people escaping a far-right apocalypse, it means just that. Cytis, CC0.

As a first step, if you haven’t already, get yourself a passport. Only 37% of Americans have one, don’t be one of the 63% who are stuck in a fascist society with no way out. It costs $130, which we know isn’t a sum everyone will have handy, but here’s where the time comes in. You have the luxury of time, use some of it to get that cash together. When it’s the document that will save your life, isn’t it worth some sacrifices to save for it?

So you’re getting a passport, what now? Your whole life should become an exercise in planning for a future as an immigrant somewhere else. What are your skills, what do you have to offer another country who might take you? Contrary to popular belief you don’t have to work in finance or computer programming to emigrate, a huge number of countries have skill shortages in much more mundane areas. If you can’t find one of those visas there are digital nomad visas, or even ancestry visas if Grandad came from the old country. We can’t hold your hand here, you will need to become an avid student of international visas. Every country’s immigration department has a website listing what’s on offer, and it’s up to you to spend your time trawling through them.

The Duolingo page on Google Play
Better the owl chasing you now than the fascist state doing so in the future.

Having started looking, what skills can you learn? Can you come up with a location-independent way to earn a living? How many languages can you speak? Anglophones tend to be bad at learning other languages, so it’s an easy way to give yourself an edge. Sometimes visas even hinge on speaking the language, as an example Japan has one for agricultural workers which requires a high standard of Japanese. We know from our own experience here at Trans Rescue that language learning is hellishly difficult, but with apps such as Duolingo being only a download away at least it’s never been easier to start.

Here’s the bottom line then. Only the most blinkered of individuals could claim that there’s no threat of America lurching over the brink into fascism, or that trans people wouldn’t be first against the wall in that eventuality. There’s no credible future in somehow seeing off the military industrial complex of a fascist government with an AR-15 popgun, so your best chance of avoiding the inevitable is to get out. Time is running out for that to happen, so the earlier you take action the better your chances of survival. We can offer basic advice and we’ve done our best to share as much as we can here, but we can’t hold your hand through the whole process.

That’s up to you.

Header image: Alt-right members preparing to enter Emancipation Park, Charlottesville, ‘Unite the Right’ rally, 12 August 2017. Anthony Crider, CC BY 2.0.

Anatomy Of A Scam

It’s an unfortunate but inevitable side-effect of  running a non-profit working in developing countries, that we  find ourselves the target of scammers who impersonate desperate passengers in order to extract money from us. Some of their stories sound believable at first, others fall apart after asking simple questions, and the rest, well, let’s just say that some would-be scammers have fertile imaginations.  We’ve become pretty good at spotting them, by analyzing the many available information sources, by investigating their stories, and by experience and intuition. To provide readers with an introduction to this facet of our day-to-day work then, we’re sharing with you a recent scam attempt and a little of our investigation.

The message as we received it

Screenshot of scam message text. Transcription in body of page.
The message from the scammer. We’ve concealed names and locations.

We received a message on Telegram, which you can read in the screenshot. It has a set of pictures, and the following text:

Good evening, I’m [redacted] based in [redacted]. Sometime last year my village mate helped me set up my own community through transrescue and that’s how I got your number. She is [redacted], right now she is out of reach. The reason I have contacted you directly, we are going to [big city] reasons being the community here does not want us any more you understand right? I have 2 trans men 2 intersex kids and 3 gays. Let me get straight to the point we do community service some programme [redacted] organised for us bead making and weaving, even bed making. We just sold all that stuff and rented a house in [redacted], it’s 4 bedroom. Local chief wants us to go away ASAP, that why I’m here, can you help us relocated? I need to get a lorry carry all our belongings to [big city] that’s all.

Along with the text was a series of images, of which we’ve posted a screenshot. We’ll refer to them as images 1 through 5 in the following analysis, but first of all it’s worth looking at the story itself.

How it all falls apart

A collage of images posted by the scammer. African men, basket weaving, a woman doing beadwork, and a dormitory.
The images sent to us by the scammer. Presented in very low resolution for illustrative purposes only, these are the property of their respective copyright holders.

This was one of those scam attempts which caused us to smell a rat when we first opened it, as we can tell you from experience, running a house as a refuge for queer people is no small undertaking.  If someone we had been associated with were doing that, we’d know about it. We’d have almost certainly been financing it, and we’d know the people within it by both name and face. The idea that the person mentioned in the message could have been running such an operation without our knowledge is not credible. In addition the industries suggested, bead work and basket making, seem calculated to appeal to an imagined European idea of what Africans might do. As enterprises for a queer refuge, they stretch credibility.

Turning to the images, our attention was first attracted to image 5, the dormitory. It’s what we’d recognise as basic but comfortable accommodation, and it might just have passed muster but for a few details. Have a look at that window first, it’s a unitary double-glazed window placed in a deep embrasure, those walls are thick. It’s simply not an African window or building but a European one designed for a cold climate.  Even the beds and interior aren’t quite right, in that while pine isn’t unknown in the country this is supposed to be from, it would be unusual to see so much of it.

As you might expect, we turned to a reverse image search to confirm our suspicions. The dormitory in image 5 does indeed provide comfortable accommodation, however it’s not in Africa but in Ireland. It’s at the Black Sheep Hostel, Killarney, and it’s repeated across many accommodation booking websites.

Not unexpectedly, the story falls completely apart as we search the rest of the images. Image 1 is a pair of Liberian gang members in a story about a scam targeting gay men, while image 2 is a pair of Nigerian gay men on Facebook. Image 3 is a Wikipedia image of  Edisto island sweetgrass baskets, and image 4 can be found in the beadwork article on Encyclopedia Britannica. We’ve presented them in very low resolution for illustrative purposes of the scam only, as these remain copyrighted images.

So welcome to a typical day running a small non-profit, this scam attempt took up a while of our time if not fortunately our money.