Since Trump’s return to the Oval Office, the Netherlands has revised its travel advice for LGBTQ+ people travelling to the US.
Although travel advice previously stated that American laws and customs surrounding the LGBTQ+ community are comparable to the Netherlands, they are now labelled as different.
What changed?
According to the NOS, the US now has local laws that could hinder LGBTQ+ individuals’ access to healthcare or cause trouble upon entry to the country.
The latter especially affects transgender and nonbinary people, since American authorities now require short-term travel authorisation and visa applicants to indicate their gender at birth, accepting M or F only.
People who don’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth could therefore face issues when entering the US, or be subject to awkward questioning.
Trump hates gender
This change in travel advice is a consequence of the Trump administration’s repeated targeting of the queer community — transgender and non-binary people in particular.
Trump has been busy issuing presidential decrees that remove protections against LGBTQ+ people since his inauguration and has chosen the word ‘gender’ as public enemy number one.
In light of this, government documents can no longer use words such as ‘gender identity,’ or ‘non-binary’, and government agencies can no longer display the rainbow flag.
@pinknews The U.S. State Department has removed “TQI+” from its section on travel advice for LGBTQI+ travellers, now reading just ‘LGB’. This is one of many instances of the Trump administration removing references to LGBTQ+ from federal websites. This follows a memo issued on Wednesday the 29th of January by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management ordering federal agencies to take down “all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology"… #presidenttrump #transgender #lgbtqia #whitehouse #usa ♬ Minimal for news / news suspense(1169746) – Hiraoka Kotaro
But it’s not just about symbols — the administration also blocked care for trans youth and removed the option of not declaring your gender on US passports, causing a bureaucratic nightmare for many Americans.
For more information about what to look out for, the Dutch government directs people to their website with travel advice for LGBTQ+ people.
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