Canada immigration website crashes amid strong Trump lead
Canada’s official website providing information on immigration and citizenship has been experiencing repeated outages, presumably due to a surge in traffic as Donald Trump grabbed an early lead in the US presidential race.
Just as the race was kicking off many Americans joked that they would move out of the US, namely to Canada, if Trump won the presidency.
#Canada immigration website appears to have crashed: https://t.co/v79hLsUQ5w#ElectionNightpic.twitter.com/hTAzmzya5K
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) 9 November 2016
It may be a coincidence, and may not be, since the site already crashed earlier this year – when US presidential candidate Donald Trump declared victory on Super Tuesday. Surprisingly, the search trend “how can I move to Canada” spiked violently that day, just as it is doing at the moment, according to Google statistics.
People in the US are increasingly searching for the word "emigrate" over the last few hours #ElectionNighthttps://t.co/CJCBsKKKNEpic.twitter.com/hEH5lmPko1
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) 9 November 2016
Searches for the word “emigrate” also jumped in the United States as the Republican steamed ahead in Tuesday’s election, the Telegraph reported.
The Canadian immigration site -- https://t.co/ndxYr5ZaDu -- is currently down, presumably under the strain of unprecedented demand.
— Ina Fried (@inafried) 9 November 2016
Even ahead of election day, many celebrities expressed their discontent with Trump's anti-immigration and borderline racist remarks, and have threatened to leave the US if the Republican wins.
Immigration Canada's website is down. No joke. Hope @Canada has construction crews on the border, building the wall. ;) #ElectionNight
— El Canaco (@ElCanaco) 9 November 2016
The ‘Breaking Bad’ TV series actor Bryan Cranston suggested that he would leave the US for Canada if the Republicans win. Other US stars like actress Barbara Streisand and Stephen King said they were planning to leave the US should Hillary Clinton lose.
In September the master of horror said that a Trump presidency scares him “more than anything else.”
“It scares me to death. To the point where I've actually thought of moving to Canada, which is close to Maine,” he told The Washington Post. “And I can hear a lot of my conservative friends saying, 'Ah, good! Go! Get out of here!'”
Streisand told Australian journalist Michael Usher that she will either move to Australia or Canada, in order not to be under Trump’s rule.
“I’m either coming to your country, if you'll let me in, or Canada,” Streisand said in a ‘60 Minutes' interview in August . "He has no facts. I don't know, I can't believe it."
