When the victory of the Republican Donald Trump in the US presidential elections began to take shape on Tuesday, the number of Americans who started looking for possibilities of emigration to Canada, Australia or New Zealand on the Internet increased sharply, Reuters writes today.
Google searches for “moving to Canada” rose 1,270 percent in the 24 hours after polls closed on the US East Coast. Similar searches related to moving to New Zealand even increased by almost 2,000 percent, while in the case of Australia it increased by 820 percent.
As of Wednesday evening EST, searches for emigration to the three countries reached record highs, a Google official said. The company doesn’t share absolute numbers, but data from the New Zealand immigration website shows that it saw around 25,000 new users from the US on November 7, compared to just 1,500 on the same day a year ago.
Some lawyers who deal with the issue are also experiencing a sharp increase in demand. “Every half hour there’s a new email inquiry,” said Evan Green of Canada’s oldest immigration law firm, Green and Spiegel.
The sudden enthusiasm for emigration is similar to the markedly increased interest in moving abroad that was already evident after Trump’s first election victory in 2016. But this time his re-election followed a particularly divisive campaign, after which nearly three-quarters of American voters, according to Edison Research, said that they feel American democracy is under threat.
Many Americans also worry that a Trump presidency could drive an even greater wedge between Democrats and Republicans on issues such as race, gender and reproductive rights, according to Reuters.
“Trump is an impulse, of course, but it’s also a question of society. The majority of Americans voted for him, and some people don’t necessarily feel comfortable in such a society anymore. People are afraid of losing their freedoms,” Green thinks.
Source: zpravy.tiscali.cz
