Canadian passport stamp. Image: IB Photography/Shutterstock
If the Canadian immigration website is anything to go by, the US is about to experience a massive emigration moment, as Donald Trump is named president-elect of the US.
The shock comprehensive victory for Donald Trump in the presidential election has come as a surprise to many of those orchestrating what were thought to be close-to-accurate polls. The fallout is now starting to hit home for Clinton supporters.
While celebrities like Katy Perry have called for an outright revolution, the vast majority of Americans who do not agree with his nationalistic views are now weighing up their options.
One option in particular was considered so popular that it has now crashed the immigration website of its northern liberal neighbour, Canada.
While now back up and running, the fact that it went down in the first place has suggested that its servers could not handle the amount of people trying to access the website, to inevitably seek residence outside the US.
In order to move to the country, US citizens would need to apply for a residency permit, typically stipulating a move for work or family reasons.
But in reacting to the site’s downtime, people still in a rather fragile state after the Trump victory were venting their horror on Twitter.
Stocks, the U.S. dollar and now Canada’s immigration website … all crashing. pic.twitter.com/1Op5A9pzAV
— AJ+ (@ajplus) November 9, 2016
A friend just called to say that Canada's immigration website just crashed. Y'all. That is no good.
— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) November 9, 2016
Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) – the agency responsible for the country’s immigration – has not commented on the site crashing, but the appearance of a 500 internal server error offers a possibility that it was not actually caused by a sharp spike in traffic.
Regardless, the crashing of the website is reminiscent of what happened following the UK’s decision to leave the EU, when the Irish Passport Office was inundated with applications for Irish citizenship.
