American Dreamers

**American Dreamers**, as they're known is a title given to those who fled their homes in the United States of America following the rise of violence during the civil war. As it stands 1 million Americans (approximately 1.1 million) became refugees, with 1 million of them fleeing to Canada, while 100,000 fled to Mexico. Dreamers fled due to a multitude of reasons, ranging from ideological grounds to fleeing due to persecution.

## American Refugees

Mexican refugees from New Mexico preparing to flee south.

### **Location**

Global (concentrated in Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Colombia)

### **Outcome**

Canadian Refugee CrisisMexican Refugee Crisis

Canadian Red Scare

Depopulation of the United States' territory

## During the civil war

The "First Wave", as it is known was kickstarted shortly after the independence of the Peoples' Union of America, as within minutes of the declaration hundreds of people had reportedly crossed into the Canadian border seeking asylum, and those numbers only increased as violence escalated.

Canadian officials made it clear Ottawa was in no position to accept refugees for any reason, but that didn't stop people from across the Northern United States from trying to travel anyways. As the war escalated and fighting broke out across New England and the Northwest more and more people became displaced and sought safety up north, to the point where in 1921 Canadian border security issued a report describing the situation as "dire and overwhelming". Simply, there were too many refugees for the Canadian officials to handle.

## Where they stand today

In contemporary times, American Dreamers are still very fresh in the North American continent, with it being a very controversial topic to talk about in Canada. The Canadian state has been very poor dealing with over 1 million people in their borders, and attempts to integrate them into Canadian society has not been successful, and because of it anti-American sentiment rose within Canada. Many of those who were personally taken from refugee camps to large cities have faced heavy discrimination by their Canadian neighbors. As a result, Dreamers in Canada are in an indefinite state of limbo, as the grand majority of them are stuck within refugee camps very close to the Canadian border with limited supplies and disease rampant.

Many blame the deterioration of Canadian-Quebecer relations to be the fault of the refugees, as those who tried migrating to Quebec were met with heavy resistance, even more so than in the rest of Canada. However, because Anglo-Canadians were the ones to enforce the settling of the refugees, it angered the French Quebecer population, and feelings of nationalism began to rise. Almost no Dreamers were settled in Quebec, and in recent years the American Dreamers have been a vast centrifugal force for Quebecer/Canadian relations.

Despite initial government promises that refugees would be short lived, that idea would be nothing but a fantasy. Unwilling to normalize/recognize either the American Commonwealth or the Peoples’ Union, 1 million Americans remained indefinitely displaced along the Canadian border, and it was only recently that the Canadian government began to fully integrate refugees to become a normal part of Canadian society.

## Impact and controversy

The most controversial part about the Dreamers is obviously Canada’s stance on them, which as stated before has been very openly xenophobic. Liberals and conservatives alike have been criticized for their policies of ignoring the plight of the refugees, almost all of whom remained quite impoverished.