(Sorry in advance for the long post)
Hello. As some of you might know, the political situation in Brazil after the first round of the 2026 elections has become bleak. I won't go into politics here, but the TLDR is: If Flavio Bolsonaro wins, me, my girlfriend and the entire country will be pretty much fucked.
We are extremely afraid and anxious, as we're part of the groups that have been and will be strongly targeted (women, LGBTQ, and autistic). And yes, I know that people often come to this sub explaining that they are LGBT, fresh out of high school, and mentally ill and want to make a move, and while that's kind of like us, we are really desperate and would not be considering moving countries if the situation wasn't really bad.
After doing our research, which was greatly focused on Canada as it seemed like the right fit for us, we weren't able to think about any useful plan, and after some generalist research, we know it's about the same scenario for most, if not all, countries, and as it stands we're rapidly losing all hope of being able to live a normal life.
We are both currently unemployed and without formal work experience, we are in our third of four years of game design university, and will graduate by the end of next year if we're able to stay that much longer in our country.
As we already researched, and we won't be able to cover the costs of tuition abroad (specifically in Canada, as we only researched prices there) so we couldn't get an student visa. Without work experience, specially on our studies field, we're in a tight spot for finding work (as we can't even find internships both here and elsewhere that don't require experience). We really weren't expecting this situation at all, we were already searching for jobs, but had the opportunity to take it relatively slow to be able to focus more on our studies.
We do have the money to get to another country itself, and to survive for some time, but we are definitely worried about visas, deportation and actually finding jobs. I am a programmer, I had knowledge in this before I started this course, and because of it I am of course developing my skills in the game area. While my girlfriend is mainly a digital artist, but can write very well, and could work with that: transcription, translation, localization and things of this sort.
We're both physically able, and can do manual labor.
We did (and passed) classes on administration, so I guess we could do something in the area but I'm unsure.
I have already traveled abroad and have a Cambridge certificate of fluency in English, but while my girlfriend has not, and never tested her English level, she can speak and write in an advanced level and would take the test as necessary.
To our knowledge, none of us have any ancestry that could prove relevant in trying to get out.
In an extreme case, I believe that I could receive financial aid from my family, as we're in a better position financially. My girlfriend's family, besides being on the poorer side, would never help us with this.
Although technically we could be eligible to seek asylum if things start to go down, we know that it would be both dangerous to stay in our country for long if it comes to wait for it to happen; and we're uncertain if we would really be granted asylum or just end up being denied after a long process with probably some money involved. (I admit we are yet to do more research on this, besides what could count as enough motive to be granted asylum.) Anyway, we are not relying on this.
Honestly we don't have an enormous list of things we want/would like a country to have, because we never wanted to leave, the only things we would like would be:
- to be able to survive (be able to work, be able to pay for our needs);
- to be safe (safe in the sense that I am trans, we are in a queer relationship, we would be immigrants and both are women);
- be able to obtain citizenship at some point so we don't have to return in case Brazil really goes down that road;
The only little bit of a not essential thing we would like, is for the country to be colder, at least the tiniest bit, or at least to have better weather than the place we're currently living that most days of every season is just: heatwave but with lots of rain and blooming flowers (spring and summer), heatwave but windy (autumn), and heatwave but really really dry (winter), though this is nowhere close to important as the other things listed and would just like to be safe.
We know our situation is basically impossible, but we're desperate to leave as we don't believe we're going to be able to live through this situation so our questions are this:
- do we have any hope of leaving at all? At this moment, it really doesn't seem like it, but we are missing a lot of information.
- is there any specific country that we should do more research on as it could be relevant?
Of course, experience of people who managed to make the move with a similar situation or motives to ours, or if anyone has any wisdom or advice of what to do in this situation, would also be really appreciated