It's official, US citizens look to flee to Canada after Trump win
The Canadian Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship website crashed on US election night and that's because...America.
As the election results rolled in and murmurings spread that Donald Trump was on the verge of winning the US presidency on Tuesday night, the Canadian Immigration website abruptly went black.
Rumors circulated that the cause of the shutdown was thousands of US citizens visiting the site. Well, the Canadian government has substantiated those reports.
On election night, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada website became inaccessible around 11 p.m. ET because of a flood of more than 200,000 visitors, according to a spokeswoman for the government entity. More than half of those visitors were based in the US.
"The volume for this time period is significantly higher than the same time the previous week, when the website saw just over 17,000 users," said the spokeswoman in an email.
Typically, the percentage of US visitors to the site ranges from 8.8 to 11.6, according to the spokeswoman. She also noted that the large number of visitors on election night didn't indicate the amount of people who tried to access the site after it shuttered.
Trump was elected president of the United States this week after a divisive campaign in which he said he'd round up and deport 11 million undocumented people. He also promised to build a wall along the Mexico border and create a mandatory registration for Muslim Americans.
With this type of talk, it doesn't seem surprising that news of his win would drive people in the US to check out Canada's stance on immigration.
Fear of Trump being the next US president has also been a hot topic on social media. Not only have people announced on Twitter and Facebook that they're looking to Canada as a new home, but also they've said Europe and Australia are options. It's unclear, however, how serious people are about acting on these pronouncements.