Finally, Europe has found a group of refugees who aren’t welcome—Americans.
As reported by Reuters this week, there is a small but growing number of U.S. citizens attempting to claim asylum in Europe, on the grounds that they are transgender. One such individual is Veronica Clifford-Carlos, a 28-year-old artist from San Francisco, who left the U.S. in June this year, hoping to be granted refugee status in the Netherlands. Clifford-Carlos claimed that the U.S. is no longer safe for trans people, and that “I have people screaming ‘faggot’ at me in the street … I have people threatening my life, threatening to assault me, threatening to follow me home and kill my family.”
Shockingly, for a country that normally appears to accept anyone from anywhere, no questions asked, the Netherlands rejected Clifford-Carlos’s application. In August, the American launched a lawsuit against the rejection—the first of its kind. Clifford-Carlos is not, however, alone in fleeing the supposed dystopian hellscape of Trump’s America. The advocacy group backing the lawsuit, LGBT Asylum Support, says it’s currently working with 20 other transgender Americans to make asylum claims. Official data from the Netherlands show that a total of 29 Americans applied for asylum there in the first half of this year, though the reason for each case is not recorded.
It is exceedingly rare for U.S. citizens to be granted asylum in European countries. Usually, this only happens incidentally, when an American dependent of someone with another citizenship—such as a parent—is given refugee status. For the Dutch government—or any European government—to accept an asylum application from America would imply criticism of the U.S. government. This is something that any European government would, understandably, be reluctant to do.
More importantly, there is virtually no rational reason for the Netherlands or anywhere else to accept these American ‘refugees.’ The belief that the U.S. is some kind of bigoted dictatorship is completely delusional. The ‘transphobic’ regime these people claim to live under is simply the upholding of basic common sense. Since taking office in January, Donald Trump has introduced various pieces of legislation that reaffirm biological reality. As one of his first acts, Trump signed an executive order forbidding males from participating in sporting events for women and girls, as well as vowing to keep male athletes out of women’s events at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.He also issued an order stating that, for purposes of federal law and administrative policy, male and female are defined by biological sex rather than self-declared gender identity—an approach supported by most Americans. Various bills have been introduced on state levels attempting to ban gender-transition surgeries and cross-sex hormones for minors, including a successful statute in Tennessee.
This hardly sounds like authoritarian overreach. Rather, the Trump administration is simply clearing out the malign influence of transgender ideology from government agencies and state-funded institutions—something that should have been done a long time ago. Americans mostly do not think that children should be allowed to be surgically mutilated or given experimental drugs to stop puberty, simply because they feel like the opposite sex. Restricting this horrific practice is not tyranny, but basic safeguarding.
Trans people aren’t the only ones angling for an easy relocation to Europe. Hundreds of researchers have fled Trump’s supposed attack on academia, applying for positions in France. One institution, Aix-Marseille University, is even offering what it calls “scientific asylum” to academics who have had their funding cut by the Trump administration. Back in July, the university’s ‘Safe Place for Science’ programme welcomed eight American academics who hoped to receive positions to continue their research in France. These science ‘refugees’ are exactly the kind of people you might expect. Among the applicants were a climate scientist and his wife, who, according to Politico, “studies the intersection of judicial systems and democracies.” They told the outlet they wanted to get out of America because they were both “working in areas which are targeted” by the Trump government and were afraid of funding cuts. Another climate researcher who applied to the programme thinks that “the entire system of research and the entire education in the United States is really under attack.”
Eric Berton, president of Aix-Marseille University, went even further and likened DOGE’s fat-trimming to the persecution of academics by the Nazis. “What is at play here today is not unrelated to another dark period of our history,” he said. Berton, as well as former French President François Hollande, would both like to see ‘scientific refugees’ from Trump’s America be awarded official status.
Contrary to hyperventilating rhetoric, having federal funding for your ‘groundbreaking’ research on the lived experience of climate racism isn’t fascism. It’s frankly a miracle these people were able to pursue such nonsense for so long. If European universities want to throw millions at this kind of thing, then so be it. Aix-Marseille has already promised funding worth €15 million for 20 research posts. But it has also begged the French government to match that sum. Using taxpayer money to bankroll the vanity projects of a bunch of woke, ideologically blinkered Americans is an affront.
It’s insane how many left-wing Americans truly believe they should be entitled to claim asylum in the EU, purely because the party they dislike is now in power. Ireland, perhaps the most obvious choice for American wannabe refugees, has seen a significant uptick in Americans applying for asylum since Trump’s re-election last year, most of which were rejected. Many more are trying the conventional route, applying for passports and visas. In fact, in the first two months of this year, U.S. applications for Irish passports were at the highest level in a decade. France, too, has seen an increase in the number of long-stay visa applications from Americans. While these Americans aren’t claiming actual asylum, many of them use hysterical language that evokes images of refugees—they talk of the Trump administration ‘kidnapping’ illegal migrants or turning the U.S. into a misogynist dystopia à la The Handmaid’s Tale.
There’s something hilarious about watching woke professors sorrowfully leaving behind their cushy Ivy League positions, to continue their research on decolonising climate science in the south of France. Are we supposed to feel sorry for these wealthy Americans who are ‘forced’ to swap their high-flying careers in New York City for a life of sipping Aperol Spritzes in the Mediterranean? Should we shed a tear for celebs like talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres, who was ‘exiled’ to a £22-million Cotswolds mansion? Cry me a river.
All these Trump ‘refugees’ are in for a rude awakening. In practically any unfortunate European nation they choose to escape to, they’ll likely have to contend with the rise of right-wing populism there, too. Italy already has a populist government, and nationalist and conservative parties are doing phenomenally well in the polls in Germany, the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands. Hopefully that drives them back to whence they came—Europe has enough of its own insane left-wingers as it is.
If there’s one positive takeaway from this story, it’s that at least the EU’s notoriously broken asylum system is still capable of keeping these people out. It may give a free pass to people pretending to be from war-torn countries, adults claiming to be children, and literal criminals. But at least it draws the line at Americans with a victim complex.