TORONTO: After Joe Biden’s disastrous TV debate with Donald Trump, when the president’s reelection prospects began unravelling, Vancouver immigration lawyer Randall Cohn started getting calls from Americans.
It was the first “panic period” among people anxious about another Trump administration and interested in moving to Canada.
“The surge reduced a little bit after (Kamala) Harris became the nominee, and then I got another surge in the last couple weeks,” Cohn told AFP.
Following Trump’s Nov 5 victory, Google Trends reported a more than 1,000 per cent increase in US-based searches on moving to Canada.
After his 2016 win, elevated traffic crashed Canada’s immigration website.
The phenomenon of left-leaning Americans becoming “Canada-curious” after a Republican election victory predates Trump.
There were similar media reports when Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Experts note the number of Americans who have actually uprooted and moved to Canada because of an election result is hard to quantify but is understood to be low.
Immigrating to Canada is difficult, and by some measures, harder now than ever.
“Somebody with no pre-existing connection to Canada is going to have a really, really difficult time,” Jacqueline Bonisteel, a partner at the Corporate Immigration Law Firm, told AFP.
CAN’T BUY RESIDENCY
Cohn said he has gotten calls from “fairly wealthy” people distraught by Trump’s comeback who feel “entitled to be mobile”.
“They want to basically buy the thing from the menu that will get them permanent residence in Canada,” he said.
“I effectively have to say it’s not as easy as you think it is and there’s no way to buy residency.
Shanthony Exum, a former Brooklyn resident who moved to Montreal during the pandemic before the 2020 election, described immigration as “daunting … exhausting (and) expensive”.
The 42-year-old artist offered caution to Americans eyeing Canada for political reasons.
“Trump’s policies are terrifying to me but that wasn’t the reason I moved,” she said.
Exum had a long-standing fondness for Montreal and was visiting the city as New York City’s Covid dead were being stored in refrigerated trucks.
Then her Brooklyn landlord sold the property where she lived, so she decided to try staying in Canada.
Her love of Montreal steadied her through an arduous immigration process.
“It’s easier to run toward something that away from something,” she told AFP.
ASYLUM CLAIMS
Waves of Canadian citizenship applications from distraught Democrats may be unlikely, but experts agree Canada could face more refugee claims.
Sean Rehaag, director of York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies, has noted the number of US citizens who sought asylum in Canada spiked when Trump first took office.
In 2016, 129 Americans made refugee claims in Canada. That jumped to 869 in 2017 and 642 in 2018.
Rehaag has written that those 1,500 were “mainly the children of people fearing deportation due to a change of their immigration status after spending years in the United States”.
Given Trump’s pledge to use the US military to carry out a mass deportation of undocumented migrants, Canadian authorities have said they are on alert for large movements of people towards the border.
If a mass deportation happens, “you’re going to see a significant increase of the volume of people who are crossing into Canada irregularly”, said Cohn.
But refugee laws have also changed since Trump’s first term.
The Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States was expanded in 2023, making it harder for anyone coming from the US to claim asylum in Canada.
Underpinning the agreement is the notion that Canada views the US as safe, so individuals not entitled to refugee status there are unlikely to merit protection in Canada either.
The agreement was already subject to Canadian legal challenges and some argue Trump’s election makes it more untenable.
“It doesn’t meet our standards for how we should be treating people,” said Jamie Chai Yun Liew, an immigration expert at the University of Ottawa, citing key difference in how Canada views vulnerable groups, including claims related to gender-based violence or gender diversity.
She urged the Canadian government to “take a good look at what Trump… has done in the past” and what he is proposing for his next term, and consider reviewing the pact.