'If Donald Trump wins, I'm moving to Canada'
This has been a refrain heard over and over again throughout this year's presidential campaign. Now, with the news breaking that Trump will be the 45th president of the United States, it seems that swathes of Americans are looking to make good on their promise - enough Americans, in fact, to crash Canada's immigration website.
Canada's Citizenship and Immigration website went down at around 10.30pm Eastern Standard Time, when a Trump victory began to look more likely after polls predicted that states like Florida and Ohio would swing in his favour. It was down for nearly an hour due to the sheer number of Americans scoping out what they'd need to do to move over the border (though the glitch has since been fixed and the site is now up and running).
Instead of instructions on how to apply for Canadian citizenship or a temporary visa, visitors to the site were greeted with a 'gateway timeout' error message.
A similar rush to the Canadian immigration site took place in the wake of the UK's EU referendum earlier this year.
Google search traffic on terms like 'emigrate' and 'how to emigrate to Canada' also shot up after the Republican victory in swing states. Most ominously, a huge number of Google users also began searching 'end of the world'...
Aside from the impending presidency of Donald J. Trump, it's easy to see why Canada is such an appealing prospect. The scenery is beautiful, the national stereotype is of politeness, it's been voted by Lonely Planet as next year's must visit travel destination andtheir Prime Minister is ridiculously photogenic
So how does one go about moving to Canada? Your easiest 'in' is if you have family already living there. After that, you'll need to acquire a temporary work visa sponsored by a Canadian employer.
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