On Tuesday, Canada updated its travel advisory for the U.S. to flag the explosion of anti-LGBTQ legislation in states across the country.
“Some states have enacted laws and policies that may affect 2SLGBTQI+ persons. Check relevant state and local laws.” The Canadian acronym includes “2S” for two-spirit people in the Native American community.
The issue was raised by reporters in both French and English at a news conference on Tuesday in New Brunswick. Answering in French, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters that the travel advice was “not political” but that the government wanted to warn a “specific group of Canadians of a situation that may be difficult for them.” She added: “Our priority, always, in all of our foreign policy, is to protect all Canadians and we’ll continue to do that.”
Speaking in English, Freeland stressed that it’s the government’s job “to monitor whether there are particular dangers to particular groups of Canadians” and “to put at the center of everything we do, the interests and the safety of every single Canadian and of every single group of Canadians.”
The U.S. government concurs that hate crimes against the LGBTQ community are on the rise. “LGBTQI+ individuals face a surge in violence against individuals and community spaces,” according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s resource page. “Federal threat monitoring has shown that these threats are increasingly tied to hate groups and domestic violent extremists. LGBTQI+ Americans – especially transgender women and girls of color – have experienced disproportionately high rates of violence and hate crimes for decades.”
A general concern for public safety is emerging as a top concern among inbound travelers. In a recent survey of 12,000 global travelers across 15 markets by Destination Analysts, one of the travel industry’s top research firms, a general concern for personal safety ranked as the No. 3 deterrent to traveling to the United States. No. 1 was a tie between costs and concern over gun violence.
In 2019, international travelers injected roughly $239 billion into the national economy, accounting for nearly 10% of America’s total exports and services.
Inbound Canadian travel to the U.S. is down roughly 19% since 2019 — but still represents an enormous chunk of the overall U.S. tourism pie. This year, Canadians will make up roughly 27% of the 62.8 million inbound foreign tourists who visit the United States, according to the National Travel & Tourism Office (NTTO), the agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce that tracks tourism statistics.
The American Civil Liberties Union is currently tracking 495 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced by state legislatures around the country.
Seventeen states have introduced more than 10 anti-LGBTQ bills. They are: Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
Legislatures in another seven states — Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Michigan and Utah — have introduced between seven and nine anti-LGBTQ bills.
The ACLU’s website notes: “While not all of these bills will become law, they all cause harm for LGBTQ people.”
