Let's Keep Astrid In Canada

hello friends! this fundraiser is for our dear friend Astrid, who is applying for Canadian permanent residency under Humanitarian & Compassionate Grounds after living in Canada for over a decade. Specifically, we are raising money to pay her legal team's retainer fees as she continues with her application for residency. If her application is rejected or fails to materialize, she will be facing a deportation order. This would be catastrophic for Astrid and for all of us, so we need your help.

if you're here from the black dresses twitter: Thank you so much for showing up <3 hope to see you at the show!

if you've come from elsewheres: hey! thank you for checking this out <3 we're putting a show in Toronto on July 9th! Details further down the page.

More about Astrid:

Astrid Idlewild is a Texas-born and raised trans woman (she/her/hers) who came to Canada after surviving institutional conversion therapy in the late mid 80's. She voiced as trans in 1991 at the age of 18, transitioned without clinical supervision, and in the late ’90s was a plaintiff in the first-ever human rights high court case to test the first non-discrimination law ever passed by a state or province which explicitly covered trans people (Julienne Goins v. West Group, Inc. [635 N.W.2d 717]) She is kind of a badass. Astrid has lived, worked, performed, and participated in Canada for the majority of her adult life, earning two degrees (H.B.A. with distinction, urban & Canadian Studies, UofT, 2009; M.U.P., urban planning, McGill Univ., 2012), writing under the name of Patience Newbury, and (!!!) may have been responsible for the origin of “dead name” and “deadnaming” in 2011! (!!!!!!!)

Unfortunately, after finishing her education, Astrid lost her status after unsuccessfully attempting, within her post-graduate work permit, to enter an unregulated profession with no known trans practitioners in Canada and no publicly regulated placement/apprenticeship structure which would have afforded her the work experience to apply for routine permanent residency. Since then, Astrid has survived for nearly a decade, under the table, without the support of legal residency in Canada, and cannot sustain this legal limbo for much longer.

THE SITUATION:

It’s been a little over a decade. Post-loss of status, Astrid is filing an application with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for permanent residency under Humanitarian and Compassionate Grounds (info here) after many years of being nudged toward this path by longtime friends and her therapist. She is being represented legally by a Toronto migration firm specializing in LGBTQ2SIA+ cases (link!), and they have confirmed that she has a valid, strong case for permanent residency on H&C grounds! This is promising! However, legal fees are steep, and difficult if not impossible to come up with single-handedly as a marginalized person without legal residency. My understanding is that since Astrid’s undocumented status is already established, a deportation order to remove her from Canada will be issued should her appeal fail to materialize, or if the H&C grounds application comes up short and isn’t approved by the IRCC. So even in the short-term, proceeding with the application is critical for Astrid's continued security — especially so in light of worsening conditions for trans people in the U.S.

So why is this important?

Well, Besides being an all-around cool woman, Astrid is an elder in the trans community. We don't have many of those. Astrid came of age in a world lacking much of the visibility and solidarity that the younger generation (myself included) often take for granted. More than that, she is a seasoned and active participant in the ongoing struggle for the human rights of trans people.

Despite these accomplishments and continued efforts, the social, economic, and political situation for trans people in North America continues to worsen by the day. It's not getting better. Astrid came here for a reason, and has lived here for most of her entire adult life. This is her home. She has her chosen family and life here. She sometimes helps a single mother to look after her trans kid and her cis sibs. Her support structures are here, on our side of the border, and she's a valuable part of our support structure too. She’s part of the family!

We belong to each other in a really tangible way. Astrid has been fighting hard for a home for her entire life and we've all benefited from her solidarity and her effort and her experience and her resiliency. Broadly, we don't have much without each other, and given the current hostile reality down south a deportation order is an existential threat for a trans person. It appears very much like a death sentence; someone is torn from her home and her family, robbed of the ground beneath her feet, and nobody anywhere gains anything from it. It's senseless and it's cruel. We love Astrid! And we can help prevent this, so let's do it, let's take care of each other.

thanks for reading. anything you can spare means the world to us. fingers crossed. be safe out there~

-mara, tracy, anna, emily, rook, devi, june, and astrid <3