Washington: 'How to emigrate to Canada' was among the top trending topics on Twitter as Donald John Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States on Wednesday in a surprise outcome.
In Google, search terms for "emigrate" and "how to emigrate to Canada" kept trending throughout the day. It happened immediately after Trump’s victory in most key swing states.
The search phrase "end of the world" also kept trending, with a huge number of traffic worldwide.
In February, the island of Cape Breton on Canada's Atlantic coast marketed itself as a tranquil refuge for Americans seeking to escape should Trump capture the White House.
In another development, Canada's main immigration website crashed posting a "500 - Internal server error" message. New Zealand too reported increased traffic to its website for residency visas from U.S. nationals in the hours before Donald Trump surged to victory in the U.S. presidential election.
Canadian officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but the website's problems were noted by many on Twitter.
In New Zealand, immigration officials told Reuters on the eve of the vote that New Zealand Now website, which deals with residency and student visas, had received 1,593 registrations from United States citizens since Nov. 1 – more than 50 percent of a typical month’s registrations in just seven days.
Visits to New Zealand Now from the United States were up almost 80 percent to 41,000 from 7 Oct to 7 November, compared with the same period last year.
Drury said New Zealand and other non-American tech companies would benefit from a Trump win.
"A lot of the tech world has been driven out of the U.S. and I think this does change the landscape quite a lot," he said.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the New York Times in July that her late husband Martin D. Ginsburg would have been advocating a move to New Zealand if Trump became president.
