Canada's Immigration Website Has Been Down for Hours

Canada’s Immigration and Citizenship site has been down for hours — apparently due to a spike in searches by Americans watching the presidential election.

Search traffic for “Canada immigration,” “Canada” and “move to Canada” has increased in the United States relative to the last seven days, according to Google Trends. Google reports that the search terms were particularly popular in Oregon, Washington, Vermont and California.

Meanwhile, Business Insider reports that a story called “How to move to Canada and become a Canadian citizen” has been the top story on the site on Tuesday night.

The Wayback Machine has an archive of the currently inaccessible site, if you’re curious, including the page with information on “how you can immigrate to Canada.”

Will anyone actually do it?

NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben took a long look at that question earlier this year.

“Every election, there’s that chorus of people who insist they are moving to Canada if candidate so-and-so wins. Everyone knows these people. They’re tweeting and Googling about it as you read this,” she wrote. (Which is undoubtedly true right now.)

Determining how many people actually follow through is surprisingly difficult, Kurtzleben found. The short answer is: a few, but probably for reasons more complicated than pure politics.

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