Photo by Akinbostanci

All Hannah Kreager can do is wait. She’s spent months in Calgary now, a decision she made after hearing talk about intensified uses of federal power from the Trump administration. She had always thought she would leave her home in Tucson, Arizona, maybe for college, but she’d never planned to leave the U.S. permanently. It was her dad who finally said, “We need to get you out of here.” She left the country in April 2025.

“I wish I didn’t have to do this. I miss my friends. I was,” Kreager pauses before the next thought, “just starting to see somebody for the first time, and I was really enjoying it. I had to leave within three months of meeting them. I still talk to them. I wish I could go back.” She worked as a line cook in Tucson—hard work, but very rewarding most nights. She had a consistent social life and had been planning to start work on a screenplay. Because of her country’s policies and attitude, though, she didn’t feel as though she had another choice but to leave it all behind.

Kreager doesn’t feel safe as a transgender woman in the U.S., not because of any one act of the federal government, or because of one bill introduced, or even just from anti-trans rhetoric bounding through both Republican and Democratic parties—but because of the impact of all of these factors combined. Now, she’s one of many trans people trying to rebuild their lives in Canada, whether the laws are friendly to their doing so or not.

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On January 20, 2025, the first day of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, he signed a broad executive order denying gender identity and protections to trans people in the U.S. The order, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” states that it is “the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” and that the sexes are “not changeable” and based in “incontrovertible reality.” It also says “gender identity” does not provide a “meaningful basis for identification.”

As the American Civil Liberties Union recognizes, this order both ignores the existence of intersex people and adopts definitions of sex that have been used to discriminate against trans people. Since then, in November, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to no longer provide U.S. passports with an X gender marker. An executive order signed earlier this year also cut funding for gender transitions for people under the age of 19.

The president and lawmakers across many U.S. states have been, to put it kindly, expressing hostility toward trans people, and to put it bluntly, attempting to eviscerate trans existence. According to data from Trans Legislation Tracker, an independent research organization tracking “legislation that seeks to block trans people from receiving basic healthcare, education, legal recognition and the right to publicly exist,” there have so far been 1,014 anti-trans bills introduced in the U.S since the beginning of 2025. One hundred and twenty-four of those bills have passed, 508 are active, and 382 have failed. All 14 anti-trans bills in Arizona that the organization has been tracking have failed now, though many from other states have passed into law, such as Alabama’s Bill SB101, which says that individuals under the age of 18 in the state can’t consent to medical treatment, meaning that trans youth under the age of 18 can’t access gender-affirming care.

For Kreager, as well as many others who’ve reached out to her for advice amid the media storm surrounding her story last spring, staying in the U.S. was not a way to live. But so far, her experience in Canada has mostly involved living in a state of limbo between the completion of her asylum application and whenever Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) makes its final decision on her case.

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Kreager is not alone. Many refugees with active applications are seeing longer wait times. On the IRCC’s website, you can check their current processing times. They have several application types, including for permanent residence cards, economic immigration, and refugee status. On December 9, the wait time for someone applying as a refugee, under the protected persons and convention refugees’ program, in Canada, living outside of Quebec, and who hasn’t already applied, faced a processing time of 103 months, or eight years and six months. According to the IRCC, there are currently 145,600 people who fit that criteria waiting for a decision. And according to a CBC report, the federal Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot, a program designed to connect skilled refugees with permanent work in Canada, is also seeing years-long processing times for refugee applications.

Now, with Bill C-12, the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act, the process may only become much more difficult and confusing than originally anticipated by Kreager and her lawyer, Yameena Ansari, with Ansari Immigration Law. “Actually, I am getting a bit concerned that it’s going to take even longer than we anticipated,” Ansari says in regards to Kreager’s case update.

Bill C-12, currently at second reading in the Senate, was first introduced in October and proposes amendments to nine pieces of legislation including the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Customs Act, and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It presents more restrictions on which immigration applications can be processed, which applications are eligible, new expansions to police enforcement, monetary penalties, and changes to regulatory oversight by the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. The 70-page document has built on several measures from Bill C-2, which was originally introduced in June. It’s at second reading in the House of Commons and outlines several new means by which claims for refugee status can now be dismissed.

Making a life in Canada is difficult enough for trans refugees without these added barriers. Ansari says Kreager’s is not an isolated case: she is currently balancing several asylum and other immigration cases from trans Americans coming from the U.S. “I called IRCC about another application,” she says in regard to a client’s case update. “It should have already been done. It was submitted two or three years ago. I called them and said, ‘What’s going on with my client’s application?’ and they said ‘This is going to take another 42 months.’”

Ansari is concerned about the ineligibilities for immigration and refugee protections sections of Bill C-12, which state that applicants are ineligible if they entered Canada after June 24, 2020, and made their claim more than one year after that entry. So, if, for example, a trans person came into Canada on vacation or to visit family any time after June 24, 2020, and then made an asylum claim in 2025, they and their claim could be considered completely ineligible. That’s part of what’s happened in Kreager’s case: she visited the country several times after that 2020 date to see a close friend.

Many organizations, including the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG), have also been expressing concerns about Bill C-2 and now Bill C-12. “For a bill of this size, it is moving through Parliament very quickly, and we would have expected more study at second reading,” says ICLMG national coordinator Tim McSorley.

Isabelle Dubois, a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, clarifies that the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security plans to hold eight meetings on Bill C-12 and the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration plans to hold four, but that this is currently subject to change. “We are also protecting the integrity of the asylum system by introducing new ineligibilities,” she says. “This means we can provide faster protection for those in need while discouraging claims from those seeking to use the asylum system to extend their temporary stay in Canada. Canada’s asylum system is not a shortcut to permanent immigration.”

Nonetheless, Canadian Council for Refugees Co-Executive Director of Policy and Advocacy Gauri Sreenivasan said in a release that the Bill will “put many refugees in danger, […] Neither the law or the public interest is being served.”

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While Canada has long been seen as a haven for those seeking asylum based on their identities—a place that’s seen as safe—these laws are changing that narrative both in Canada and abroad.

Heba is a trans woman originally from Egypt, though her family is now located in Kuwait. She came to Canada years ago for university and she’s been enjoying living here so far; it’s given her a chance to express her femininity more. She wants to stay, but she chose not to apply for refugee status because the risk of being denied is too high. She says living as an out trans woman in Egypt could be a death sentence, and that’s why she needed to be identified by her first name only in this story. Heba applied for a work visa, but she doesn’t know what to expect, and she hasn’t heard any updates on her case. She applied the day she became eligible. “The last message I got from them was the confirmation that they received my application.” That was in June. Now, like Kreager, all she can do is wait.

In the midst of the uncertainty surrounding the progression of Bill C-12, Kreager simply wants to live her life without threat. Heba just wants to avoid going back to Kuwait, which would mean loss of personal integrity and safety. And asylum seekers have no choice but to keep surviving, even under a cloud of anxiety. “If I lose, my fight isn’t over,” Kreager says.

MEG COLLINS (she/they) is a freelance journalist, poet, and editor with a background in queer studies research. Their reporting focuses on arts and culture as well as health budget and policy. Their work has appeared in the Bay Area Reporter, the Dalhouzie Gazette, and Liminal Spaces magazine.