Washingtonians consider moving to Canada amid presidential races
Mar 3, 2016, 11:27 AM | Updated: 12:30 pm
Washington saw the second highest spike in Google searches for "How to move to Canada" after Super Tuesday. (AP)
(AP)
If you’ve been watching news of the presidential races and have suddenly felt the urge to check the distance between Seattle and the Canadian border, you are not alone.
That distance is about 141 miles, by the way.
Whether it’s the possibility of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States, people in Washington are looking into the possibility of fleeing across the northern border.
Related: U.S. Sen. candidate says Donald Trump turmoil won’t change how he runs Washington campaign
Following the Super Tuesday victories of both candidates, Google data editor Simon Rogers noticed that searches for “How to move to Canada” spiked more than 350 percent. A top related search was “move to Canada if Trump wins,” according to the Boston globe. Mashable reported the number surged as high as 1,150 percent before settling around the 500 percent mark at the end of the day Tuesday. While Massachusetts — a place Trump won in a landslide Tuesday — saw by far the highest spike in searches, Washington was No. 2.
And, if you’re interested in checking your eligibility to move north, Canada’s website has a tool for that.
But, be warned, once you head over it might not be so easy to head back. 710 ESPN Seattle’ Danny O’Neil believes that if someone moves to Canada because of dislike for the president, he or she shouldn’t be allowed back in.
“It’s America and it’s a democracy and part of that is you live with the results of the public election,” he said. “And if you’re like, ‘I’m only going to be here when there’s a president that I like that’s here,’ well, you know what, I don’t know if we need you back here. I don’t know if you can just say, ‘I’m going to stop being an American for these four or eight years.'”
KIRO Radio’s Tom Tangney countered by asking whether O’Neil would live in a country with Osama Bin Laden or Adolf Hitler as the leader.
“The idea is if you see someone as the anathema to everything American, would you pull up stakes?” Tangney asked. “But even so, no, you fight from within. That’s the American spirit.”
