Posted on Advocate.com November 18, 2011 09:12:01 PM ET
Op-ed: The Harsh Reality of Some Transgender Lives
When the LGBT community breeds transphobia, everyone gets left behind, and the scores of transgender women who are commemorated each year at the Transgender Day of Remembrance are proof.
By Jake Finney, op-ed contributor
http://www.advocate.com/Politics/Commentary/Oped_The_Harsh_Reality_of_Some_Transgender_Lives/ (http://www.advocate.com/Politics/Commentary/Oped_The_Harsh_Reality_of_Some_Transgender_Lives/)
Angeline is an undocumented immigrant who has lived in L.A. for the past six years. She fled her home in Honduras in order to save her life. As a child she saw her gay uncle brutally beaten in the street by the other men in their town. As she grew into a young adult, her mother feared an even worse fate for her transgender daughter and gave her a small amount of money and told her to leave the country. She did not want to see her transgender daughter murdered, like so many of the other transgender women in Latin America, at the hands of their neighbors or the local police. Angeline's only hope for survival was to move to the United States and apply for political asylum.
Once she arrived in the U.S., it took a while for her to find support and resources. She needs to save several thousand dollars to hire a new immigration lawyer. The last one she had ended up being a con artist who promised to help her apply for asylum but instead took all her cash and changed his phone number.