Poll: Canadians not keen on easing rules for Americans to move north of the border

A new poll suggests America’s friendly neighbours to the north are not too keen on the idea of making it easier for U.S. citizens to move to Canada now that Donald Trump has been elected president.
A new Mainstreet Research poll conducted last weekend asked 5,066 Canadians if they would be willing to make it easier for Americans to relocate to Canada if Trump won the election.
The results, according to the survey, were not so friendly.
“Only a small percentage of Canadians said they would be in favour of such a proposal (11 per cent) compared to 72 (per cent) who would not want to ease immigration rules for our southern neighbours. (Seventeen per cent) were undecided about the proposal,” Quito Maggi, president of Mainstreet Research, said in a written statement.
And the rules for moving to Canada, Maggi said, are not so simple.
“Canada uses a complex points system to determine whether a person is allowed to emigrate to Canada…There are exemptions. Canada has a history of openly accepting refugees, as it did with during the Syrian refugee crisis, but disgruntled Democratic voters would not qualify as refugees,” he said.
Americans could find a way into the country through the skills category or through family reunification, Maggi added.
“Canada tends to pride itself as an open and multicultural society that accepts people from all over the world, but Canadians do not support any special privileges for Americans who want to move here – they would have to apply just like everyone else”, he concluded.
The poll, which was conducted on Nov. 5 and Nov. 6, has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.38 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s website went down Tuesday night as election results poured in and some think the incident signals the desire of many Americans to exit the United States in the wake of Trump’s win.