Why more people should embrace gender-neutral ID The US State Department will begin issuing passports with an X in place of gender upon request. This raises the important question of why gender is needed on passports at all? In some countries, gender is very important to citizenship. Many don’t allow…

“Fortress Europe” is a place surrounded by so many barriers, it is completely inaccessible to most people. Though Europe is not surrounded by an actual wall, it’s surrounded by an invisible wall of police, military, paperwork, navy boats and FRONTEX. Blessed with the most powerful passport in the world, however…

Go to jail or go to Canada. Canadians who think the end of Roe has nothing to do with them are in for a surprise. If anti-abortion laws are to have teeth in the US, examples will have to be made. Americans will have to go to jail. Or they…

Last week, members of the US Congress wrote a letter to themselves, asking themselves to cut back on the red tape of the US refugee system that they, themselves, created. Apparently still shocked by the byzantine system of fees, applications, processing times, pointless health procedures and background checks, Congress seems…

This week, the NY Times published an op-ed from the editorial board entitled “Putin Knows What He’s Doing With Ukraine’s Refugees.” Beyond the whiplash of seeing a western newspaper give credit to Putin for knowing anything about anything, the article struck me by its copious use of flood metaphors. Flooding…

Far from being a “technical problem with paperwork,” so-called passport politics can be a harbinger of conflict. Passport politics in Asia: Citizenship-stripping, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Today, amid all the terrible news on Ukraine, the US government finally admitted that Myanmar is committing genocide against the Rohingya. This genocide has…

This week, the Globe and Mail in Canada published a poll showing that most Canadians were willing to take the same number (70,000) or more Ukrainian refugees as Syrian refugees. That’s nice, but where did the number 70,000 come from in the first place? The answer is, nowhere. …

Vaccination cards, drivers licenses and one, giant, missed opportunity COVID-19 vaccination is a miracle of science, but it is also perhaps the single largest, mass civil registration drive in history. Never before have billions of people around the world participated in a government registration activity all at the same time…

How I learned to stop worrying and love the nation ex-situ It is well known that the UN and governments go ballistic over the term “climate refugees.” If you don’t believe me, try asking about climate refugees at the UN. You will be told to never say that, because climate…