I’ve witnessed that business they call
building a utopia for so long,
higher up the Atlantic where yearning to breathe
free meets committal at the gate.
I’ve been so frightened, friend.

—'That Business They Call Utopia, Part Two', from Can You Sign My Tentacle?

In mid-January, German tattoo artist Jessica Brösche was taken into custody by immigration officers at San Ysidro, California after arriving into the United States from the Mexican border with an American friend. As of early March, Brösche is still being detained in an ICE facility in San Diego County.

In late February, Welsh comic artist Becky Burke was traveling through North America on vacation when she was interrogated by authorities. According to the officers, doing basic chores in exchange for board counts as work, which violates the terms of a B1/B2 visitor visa—a realisation that puts many con-attending creators ill at ease, since authorities may apply the same logic to art or book sales at conventions. Burke has been in an ICE detention centre in Washington State awaiting deportation.

Columbia University graduate student and activist Mahmoud Khalil was detained from his home in New York City by ICE agents in early March. Officers told Khalil that they were acting on the command of the State Department to revoke his student visa, but when they were instead informed that he was a Green Card holder married to a US citizen, after a brief period of being clueless about how to proceed, officers instead informed Khalil that they would simply revoke that instead. When his pregnant wife asked ICE where Khalil was being detained, they refused to share details, only for his lawyer to confirm that he is being detained in an ICE facility in Louisiana, thirteen hundred miles away from his apartment in New York City. The evidence that Khalil is being punished for his pro-Palestine activism despite being a permanent resident has already drawn comparisons in the media to McCarthy-era political persecution, not to mention the Islamophobia inherent to much anti-Palestinian sentiment.

Trinidad-born US Army veteran Marlon Parris was detained—in his own words, "ambushed"—at his home in Arizona by ICE officers in late January. A permanent resident of the US for two decades, having served in the Iraq War on three tours, authorities nevertheless sought to remove him due to a prior nonviolent drug offense he committed in 2011 and served his time for—despite his wife sharing with the media that ICE had already assured Parris before he was released from prison that, due to his military service and the nonviolent nature of his conviction, he would not be deported. His next hearing regarding his detainment and potential deportation is scheduled for late March.

Stories like these as a result of the current American administration's seemingly arbitrary policy enforcements regarding immigration, one of many dangerous and destabilising policies in the nation in recent months. They are not the only positions of risk among such policies, as the same immigration enforcements have compelled locals to harass locals of colour, executive orders threaten the dignity of trans people, tariffs imposed on Canada threaten not only the security of the border but the cost of living of Northern states, and government transitions risk the sanctity of healthcare and education while stripping entire fundamental departments of staff and resources.

It is undeniable that the risk of entering—of being in—the United States is untenable. Many have already commented not only on how such a risk makes con travel to the country risky for them, but that in the interim there should be a hesitation, if not a refusal, to have conventions in the US.

I want to be clear first: I think that the above assessments are valid. There is no denying the risk is great, and people have a responsibility to themselves, their loved ones, their craft, and their community to do what is necessary to keep themselves safe.

I just also think that two other things also need to be stated.

The first is that this risk is not new but dramatically higher and more intense for marginalised international travelers, many of whom, despite good fortune, are often subjected to terrible and debasing treatment in political circumstances deemed largely more safe than the current.

The second is that safety is not merely a state of being, and that there needs to be a more thorough reckoning within our creative spaces about the role we play in safety-making.

To the first point, without putting too fine a point on it, the last several years of discourse about the World Science Fiction Convention's host bidding processes have revealed what I would argue is a dangerous series of assumptions about the conditions under which many people would value any given convention location. Safety is obviously one of those conditions, but among those assumptions—the one presently being shaken by present political events—is the notion that North America is a uniquely safe place to travel to, unrisky in a manner with which many developing nations allegedly cannot compete.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I do not say this disparagingly; after all, I love coming to the US for conventions and I hope to continue doing so. I just consider this a neutral fact: even arguably safer places in the world are not somehow safe in some essentialist sense, and even the safest among them can be tragically too challenging for some.

Navigating the calculus of hosting a convention of this size and inviting international fans and creators to those spaces is obviously full of challenges, but the discourses around those previous experiences—not just regarding recent bids, but arguably as far back as the first Worldcon I attended, which took place in Europe—are often coloured by the assumption that not only is the US uniquely accessible, but even among many other well-developed territories is a uniquely reliably safe option, whose bona fides in terms of security and dignity are not up for debate.

The current administration has obviously made the United States more unsafe for many people both locally and abroad, but let us be sure—it has never been un-unsafe to enter the United States, and for many marginalised people, the level of risk has shifted heavily in intensity, frequency, and statistical probability.

As we speak the stakes of these travel issues are higher for many marginalised people. Trans persons were already prone to intrusive inspection measures and likely to be denied entry based on their entity before this administration but are now likely to experience a wholesale ban on entry in accordance with other anti-trans executive orders. Hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants have been renditioned to the 'Terrorist Confinement Center' in El Salvador despite no confirmation that even the majority of them are indeed criminals—but increased scrutiny, denial of entry, and even deportation to other national territories has been an experience during the Biden administration as well. Activists and reporters of Arab or Indian descent have always been the target of increased supervisions and denials in a post-9/11 travel reality, but now the law is being used to deliberately punish them by creating any pretense to characterise them as holding terrorist attachments.

Put at its very simplest, the present case is that lots of cis white people now are experiencing what it is like to travel to the US as a person of colour or trans person in 2016—and lots of people of colour and trans people are bracing for things to get much worse than they have already escalated to.

I speak for myself when I say I have been very, very fortunate. I love attending conventions; I often ironically joke that, since the pandemic, convention travel is the most creative community and socialisation I may get in person in any given year. I am beyond honoured especially to be a part of this year's Worldcon, and I have every intention to attend in person and delight in the world of speculative poetry as I have been sharing alongside the rest of Seattle's capable team.

But I know I am visiting a risk by attempting to do so, and I have known the risk in particular since my first trip from Trinidad to Washington, DC as a teenager. As someone who has traveled to the US several times in good fortune, but has also witnessed chaperones with Arabic surnames be stopped for additional screenings long before current political circumstances, I know that the possibilities that surprise many persons now have often been visited upon marginalised travelers for years. It would be easy to hold schadenfreude for some congoers reckoning with the notion of the US becoming uniquely unsafe—but it would also be improper for the same reasons that I think refusing space for the international community at other locations to grow into our fandom would be improper.

I continue to attend because the community that is shaped, and the reasonings that are built, by conventions such as these are indeed radical. This genre has a powerful capacity to be a sounding board for the growth and change that this world can unlock by valuing knowledge and technology, emphasising empathy and social education, trusting in the capacity for art to tell untold stories, and forging community to defend those who dystopia would destroy. I do believe—I have to believe—that these tenets are so worth defending that attending despite the risk in order to advocate for greater international attendance is better than refusal. And while part of this reckoning must undeniably include having more earnest and conscientious discussions about hosting and supporting international conventions outside the physical bounds of the United States, it must also for the moment include having similarly earnest discussions about the risk that remains during the periods where we do not or cannot leave the American range.

To my second point, it is specifically in service of those tenets that we as a greater SFF fandom need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that safety is a Boolean state of being.

Making the personal decision to value one's own safety over additional effort or conflict is a valid one, even in this instance. I also believe, however, that given those tenets that we value, there is work that we can do—that we must do—in order to respond to potentially unsafe states of being. Those of us who have the stamina, acumen, and resources to do so can make themselves available to those at greatest risk, and in so doing play a part in the overall safety-making of conventions and convention culture.

I believe a large portion of that responsibility comes from conventions themselves. Having read the latest statement from Seattle Worldcon chair Kathy Bond, I remain hopeful that the convention is willing to do everything in its power to remain accessible and offer actionable solutions to attendees. As a multiply marginalised international traveler, I pray that the convention discovers and provides effective next steps as soon as possible for the safety and comfort of physical attendees entering the US.

But I do also believe that there is much that the rest of fandom can do in service of this safety-making, not just for the sake of this convention or your favourite creators, but for all travelers who will come thereafter. Within one's own ability, reaching out to elected officials, sharing resources regarding legal defense and public safety, providing community support to creators and fans financially impacted by inability to travel or by unfair detainment, and more is within our communal power in order to mitigate risk, empower attendees, and tip the scales toward more general safety-making in our community.

I do not believe that this work is a mere possibility. I believe that the role that this work may serve in widening the scope of our great genre is in itself a mandate of greater empathy, a wider pool of institutional and creative wisdom within our fandom, and, in the final analysis, another step toward a more compassionate and progressive world.

I believe that we have such a mandate to practice what we imagine. I believe that a better world is possible. I believe that to dwell on the encroaching darkness without rebelling against it is to curse the coming dawn. And I believe that dawn is coming.

Take care of yourselves, and take care of each other.

The stories say when we can spare just those,
one beside one, two beside two, there’s no wickedness our clasped
hands can’t split, even when
beside is an island in the other direction
where you cannot hear my heartbird
crying out to yours, be safe, be safe,
but burn those bastards’ pillars down.

—'That Business They Call Utopia, Part Two'