America’s Minorities Are Already Becoming Refugees

My very best friend in the world — who is blind and has British citizenship — called me yesterday to cancel our plans, because we’re in a heat dome. Her cancelling going out for drinks because it’s an inferno outside wouldn’t be noteworthy, except that I have never, ever heard a human being sound so desperately miserable, and I’ve spent entire days in an infusion center, so, let’s pause and appreciate the magnitude of that statement. When I asked how she was doing, she told me that she was utterly terrified about the ongoing news that seems like America will have its very first God Emperor. A man whose only passion is cruelty, and who has pledged to root people like us out of American society. How do I deal with that? I’m a man, so, I’m not really great at comforting people, so I asked about whether she could do something using her citizenship — she’s lived in the US since she was 6, and has lost most of her vision due to a progressive ocular disease, so, in terms of available resources, we’re both equally prepared to flee the military junta. I tried to reassure her that I was trying to work on an escape plan (possibly using her British citizenship), but she told me, “It’s hopeless!” As a cancer survivor, I call hope a requisite to survival, but she isn’t wrong. But now, I have another person I have to find a safe space in this world for as the walls close in. Is this what Jewish Poles felt in 1938? Nobody seems to want disabled people. Anywhere. She isn’t wrong; most countries cap immigrant medical needs at three times per capita. She might be okay on that one; I’m okay if my cancer never, ever returns. But I was struck by her entreaty, “I don’t want my life here to end!”

I certainly don’t either. It’s all very well and good to look around America and say, “This shithole country is a garbage fire of bigotry upon which an alleged government sits, and it’s time to leave,” it’s quite another to start looking into what that actually looks like. If there’s one thing America has made clear to both of us this week is that our country doesn’t value us as people. The phrase the Reich used was Lebensunwertes Leben. Go ahead and Google it. I haven’t read the odious Project 2025 manifesto, because I already know what will happen to me, and I don’t need the gory details. The problem is; most other countries have similar anti-disability immigration biases. And, on one hand; I understand it; you don’t want a bunch of undesirables flooding in and demanding unfair things like access to modern medicine and respite from roving paramilitary forces looking for women not in a Burqa. At the same time, if we value human life; why are we insisting on restricting human movement from genocide to safer places? Western Civilization is largely defined by Fear of the Other, probably from all those Eurasian tribes regularly invading and sacking Europe. That was 900 years ago, guys, we can let it go.

I’ve tried to reach out to disability advocates in the UK to see what I can do about getting her safe passage there. If so, what then? Do I get a vacation visa, go with her, and try to get in? She is blind, and hasn’t seen Old Blighty in 40 years. Leaving her alone might be a death sentence unto itself. Do I stay and try to plead my case as a foreign caregiver to a disabled person? That’s not an ideal argument, since I am, legally, also disabled. Do I try to get into graduate school there and take her with me? I have a Master’s of Science, so, getting more education isn’t a major stretch, although I do have a 10 year gap in my resume between, “God started smiting me,” and today. Not the likeliest course of action, but I will start making calls to inquire about that. Even if — and this is a massive if — we somehow make headway with disability advocates and find a sponsor, what then? Our entire lives — small, ragged, and drab as they may be — are here. Our meager disability insurance — which will end with Project 2025 — isn’t enough to cover most emigration costs. Hell, it’ll be a stretch to afford a December plane ticket if we default to my, “We’re just gonna fly over there, passports and documentation hand-in-hand, and plead our case to someone less-dangerous than the new Social Security Administration (they have our names and addresses in a federal database, Jesus, the federal government can find us in minutes). In the last week, I’ve gone from “Borders are things,” to, “Borders are cruel, arbitrary tools to instill nationalism in the citizenry, and exert slight cruelty to everyone outside them.” I’m starting to think like a Persian woman in Tehran. Every waking hour, I wonder, “What if the serial killer wins?” Every waking hour I twitch. Every waking hour, I find myself wondering if simply walking to Mexico from San Diego in the dead of night would be the safest route. I wonder if the best bet is to fly with her to England, hold a sham marriage, and see where that gets us.

If you’re wondering where disabled people are in terms of civic rights; disabled people still can’t get married without putting usually life-saving government benefits at risk. We don’t have the same righs as most LGBT+ folks (I’m one of those, too; a demisexual), and the Heritage Foundation hates us/them with a literally burning passion, I can guess how a visually impaired woman and a life-limiting disease survivor will fare. The government benefits that keep our fragile existence going are the very same benefits every Anglophonic country wishes to withhold from us, for the first few years, anyway (I can write, if anyone knows a journalism position in London). Every one of America’s visible minorities should be panicking and planning. Every nation in the world needs to prepare for an absolutely unprecedented immigration/refugee crisis, as The Donald promises to deport literally every immigrant living in the US (a terrifying notion for those of us who know we are a nation of immigrants). Most of those he plans to deport, like my friend, have been in the US for years, if not decades. Will they be de facto stateless people? Will we all have to take up residence in North Sentinel Island? Where will the North Sentinelese go? Maybe it’s time to cut the cord and decriminalize all human movement.

And if Donald Trump loses this election, that may take the immediate heat off, but the Supreme Court’s decision that they’re quite fine with lawlessness in the Oval Office means that every minority member in the country is only and ever a crazed politician bombing Berkeley. And who wants to live with that degree of uncertainty looming over the future.

I’m consumed with fear about the future, even if Biden wins. I’m more concerned about what life without my extensive personal library, art, bed, and doggies will look like. I’ve gone for lengthy hospital stays where I was deprived of all of the above. I didn’t thrive. I also look around my house and wonder, will the next inhabitant value my trees that hawks nest in, my pond that frogs spawn in during April, the songbirds that nest in the ivy on my North side wall? What will happen to the small lives that vastly enrich mine, but generate no tangible revenue? So, let’s look at exactly what it would take for me to feel safe in the country I was born in:

1. A Constitutional Amendment specifying that absolutely nobody in America is above the law.
2. The establishment of an independent investigative agency to enforce the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
3. Terms limits on every appointed federal judge. Supreme Court included.
4. A return to the Chevron Doctrine, so federal agencies can, y’know, regulate stuff.
5. A formal, written pledge from the GOP to never attempt to repeal the ACA.
6. Something like a national healthcare system.
7. A UN requisite that all members sign on to — and follow — ALL international accords, including the International Criminal Court. No exceptions, whatsoever — lawlessness is what brought us to this moment, and there’s a reason one of the forma charges at Nuremburg was “Crimes Against Peace.”

None of that is going to happen, so, regardless of who wins in November, I’m still looking to leave within the next 4 years. Perhaps the most terrifying interaction I’ve had the last week is with my father, who didn’t even try to allay my fears when I told him of my plans to emigrate for safety reasons; he just told me to get my passport and papers in order, and look into graduate writing programs for international students. Dad’s a bladder cancer survivor, he knows the stakes. And, when a parent tells you, “Let me know when and where you’re settled,” that’s terrifying. Let us all pause for a moment to contemplate the utter hellscape that American society has become for a moment when a child can tell a parent, “I’m beyond terrified of my own country, I have to leave,” and their response is, essentially, “Okay, here’s the best path out.” People used to encourage their kids to move to America, now American parents are telling their minority children that we may not be as safe as we all thought. What kind of nightmare country have we become? Is this who we really are? I’ve been aware of my nation’s cruelty from a young age, but I mostly assumed those were the growing pains of any country learning to be more transparent and democratic. Was this level of widespread, gleeful viciousness always there? Donald Trump poses an existential threat to the world, but he should also cause an existential crisis for every person in America, “Is this really the best we have to offer the world?” Because, if so; I fear that far too many foreign governments will immediately and preemptively enforce anti-immigrant laws targeting fleeing Americans. Which is a significant problem, because everyone in Trump’s America who does not align with the Federalist Society’s definition of an American (“Tucker Carlson, and literally no one else”) will be stateless people. Will Venezuela experience a refugee crisis of Americans trying to get to Argentina? Will mass deportations of second and third generation Cuban Americans sink the Caribbean?

I’ve been thinking about something that John Gartner and Harry Segal (two Jewish American psychiatrists — they’ll do well under the next regime) said regarding shame (I’m obviously paraphrasing), “The polar opposite of shame is NOT pride. Shame is an external voice that says you are worth less because of your behavior or lifestyle. Pride is your internal self asserting your worth and value. Dignity, however, is an external voice that affirms your value, and asserts that you have worth.” What America — what the world — needs desperately right now is dignity of a radical, never before seen scale. We must acknowledge and work to dignify everyone around us; and to accept (as best as we can) The Other, and even, if they adopt our culture and language, embrace them. That solves the refugee crisis immediately. They aren’t stateless deplorable people fleeing dangerous, intolerable conditions, they’re just people in search of dignity and kindness. And, here’s what I’ve learned from my time in cancer support groups — giving others the most-human and humane gift of kindess, empathy, and grace doesn’t diminish those qualities in you; it fortifies and strengthens them. In the US, we usually use the the idea of trickle down economics to refer to money, but what if it also applies to basic decency and dignity? And I’m not naive; I know that forming a drum circle and singing Alice’s Restaurant won’t fix it. I know we will need robust laws, sweeping anticorruption measures, and permanent safeguards to prevent the US from becoming an authoritarian regime; and the global community has an obvious incentive to help us from going into the abyss, for above stated reasons. And, although I know we’re never going to get some sort of Schengen Area for the Americas in my lifetime, could we, collectively, please heed Sarah Grimke’s advice and stop being so personally and collectively awful to each other? She wrote

But I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright …

That’s all any immigrant or person desperately looking to relocate in six months or less wants. We just want someplace where we can stand upright. I promise, we’re not gonna make a commotion or destroy your country, hell, we might even help you make it better.