Mass exodus to Canada in Trump era hasn’t happened

Opinion

In February 2025, the New Republic reported there was a growing number of Americans who wanted to leave the country following the election of Donald Trump.

Canadian reports backed up the assertion, particularly the news that three high-profile Yale professors would be joining the faculty of the University of Toronto in the fall of 2025.

For some Canadian observers, it may feel like a case of déjà vu. After Trump’s first election in 2016, some media predicted a sharp increase in Americans seeking to escape their country’s harsh social and political climate for Canada’s “sunny ways.”

According to Google Analytics, web searches originating in the United States involving “how to move to Canada” increased by 350 per cent on election night in 2016. A few months earlier, they’d increased by 1,500 per cent over normal search rates for the same phrase in March 2016, when Trump clinched the Republican nomination for president.

More Canadians head south

Despite such post-election musings nine years ago, the pending American mass exit didn’t materialize. According to migration data (a download is required) from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the number of Americans applying for permanent residency from January through March 2017 rose only slightly. There were 1,882 applications, just 66 more than from the same period in 2016.

As for visas and authorizations issued to people from the U.S. during the same time period, they barely increased — from 2,497 in 2016 to just 2,523 in 2017.

Americans taking up permanent residency in Canada jumped from about 8,400 in 2016 to 10,800 in 2019. However, that increase in the modest number of moves from the U.S. to Canada can hardly be construed as an exodus. Over those same two years, the number of Canadians becoming permanent residents of the U.S. continued to exceed the number of Americans who headed north.

There has been, however, a decline in the number of Canadians moving to the U.S. In 2016, the year Trump was first elected, just over 19,300 Canadians moved to the U.S. In 2019, the year before Trump lost to Joe Biden, 14,700 Canadians took up residence in the U.S.

That trend didn’t last as the gap in cross-border permanent residency widened once more during the Biden era. In 2023, while 10,600 Americans moved to Canada, 18,600 Canadians moved to the U.S.

Looking at the data from 2016 to 2023 suggests politics isn’t the primary reason why Americans head to Canada. It’s more likely driven by economic considerations, better job offers or family ties.

In terms of the apparent uptick in migrants from the U.S. heading to Canada during Trump’s second term, it’s too early to draw definitive conclusions. But numbers for the first quarter of 2025, according to the same IRCC datasets, show no signs of any significant uptake, with a drop from 2,485 Americans headed Canada’s way between January to March 2024 to 955 over the same period in 2025.

Moving to Canada isn’t easy

Despite the surge in American internet searches on moving to Canada in 2016, when Trump won the Republican nomination and then the presidency, acting on impulse in a moment of political turmoil is complicated.

Moving to Canada is not as simple as it may seem; it can be long and arduous. There’s a process and a waiting line with requirements that include an offer of employment in Canada, liquid assets and language proficiency in English, or French if Québec is the ultimate destination.

It’s easier to immigrate to Canada if there’s a close family member already living there, but still not guaranteed. Canada’s tax rate is a migration deterrent for some, even though these higher tax rates come with more services.

Although Canada’s health-care system is more inclusive and affordable, the wait times for procedures, along with the perception that Canadian services are not as robust as American health services, could also be a deterrent to migration.

In short, even for Americans, it’s not easy to migrate to Canada.

There is, however, one group of people living in the U.S. who may consider relocating to Canada: asylum-seekers.

The second Trump administration has ended Temporary Protection Status for Afghan, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Cuban and Haitian residents.

This means that people from these strife-torn countries must apply for permanent residency or “self-deport” — otherwise, they will become undocumented.

Haiti is currently unsafe. Gangs control the country’s cities and neighbourhoods and have staged a successful coup. The country is also still rebuilding after the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Afghanistan remains in the throes of a decades-long war where women have no rights. Venezuela is in a state of civil unrest; about 19 million citizens do not have enough food or sanitation. Nearly 7.7 million people have fled the country.

The plight of asylum-seekers

The crackdown on other undocumented residents and the recent issuing of large “civil penalties” in the form of fines for failing to self-deport may force others to leave the U.S. Where might they go?

Many will return to their country of residence, but others may be unable to do so and could consider Canada a convenient and safe destination. In 2016, 23,919 people made asylum claims in Canada. That number slowly rose throughout the first Trump administration to 64,020 in 2019, the last full year of the president’s first term.

Those seeking asylum in Canada declined to 23,680 in 2020 — the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic — but had increased to 171,850 by the end of 2024.

The geographic distribution of these asylum-seekers was uneven. In 2017, 50 per cent of all asylum-seekers to Canada made their claim in Québec; in 2022, 64 per cent of asylum claims were made there.

So rather than seeing a large influx of American citizens migrating to Canada during Trump’s second administration, there will likely be a larger number of asylum-seekers, many of whom have legitimate fears of persecution. How Canada chooses to handle these claims remains to be seen — but it’s urgently important for Canadian elected officials to figure it out immediately.

» Lori Wilkinson is a professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba. Jack Jedwab, CEO of the Association for Canadian Studies and the Metropolis Institute, co-authored this article.

» This column was originally published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca