Every election season, you tend to hear the same refrain: “If such-and-such wins the election, I’m moving to Canada.” (Or Europe, etc.)
But this year, for some reason or another, an unusually high number of people seem to be expressing that sentiment. In March, the number of U.S.-originating Google searches for information on moving to Canada more than doubled the previous all-time high, and they’ve remained elevated ever since.
The vast majority of that talk comes to naught, of course. The number of U.S. citizens emigrating to Canada hovers around just 8,000 a year, with election results having zero observable effect. Emigration to the United Kingdom is similarly low, and emigration to far-off Australia is even lower, although there‘s been a gradual uptick in recent years.
One reason for that, aside from all the obvious ones, is that it turns out that it’s actually not very easy for Americans to emigrate to any of those countries. These are desirable places to live, by international standards (although Canada, being Canadian, tends not to brag about it), and demand for visas significantly outruns supply.
“The number of people who have inquired about leaving for Canada has been historically high, but traditionally the number of people who do leave is a lot smaller than the people who inquire about leaving,” said George Pappas, an immigration attorney from Asheville. “The one exception was during the Vietnam War, but aside from that it’s mostly just bluster. You can’t just pick up and leave. It’s not so easy to go.”
Immigration law is much different in other English-speaking nations than it is in the United States. (All of the attorneys interviewed for this story emphasized that immigration law is controlled by the receiving country, and that they were not licensed to practice in any of these countries.) Canada and Australia both use something known as a “points system,” and the United Kingdom, post-Brexit, is making plans to create something similar.
Under a points system, would-be migrants are given points based on things such as English proficiency, education, previous time spent working in the country and job offers. The more points an applicant has, the better their chances of getting in, so Americans have a tough time relocating to those countries without a firm offer of employment in hand.
“I do get the question from time to time, but it’s not specifically related to politics, to be honest,” said Jeremy McKinney, an immigration attorney in Greensboro. “It normally has to do with employment.”
U.S. law does allow citizens to acquire a second passport without losing their U.S. citizenship, so emigrants retain the option of coming back home someday even if they become citizens of their new countries. Both attorneys said that the process for formally renouncing U.S. citizenship is actually quite detailed and not easy to set in motion.
Statistics for the first quarter of 2016 showed no increase in the number of Americans actually emigrating to Canada. It appears likely there will continue to be a lot more work for attorneys helping people move to the United States than for their cross-border colleagues helping Americans to go in the other direction.
Follow David Donovan on Twitter @SCLWDonovan