Canada's Immigration Website Goes Down For Hours After U.S. Election

Canada's Immigration and Citizenship website was down for hours Tuesday and Wednesday — apparently due to a spike in searches by Americans reacting to Tuesday's presidential election. Access was cut off on Election Day; the site was brought back online shortly after 10 a.m. ET.

Search traffic for "Canada immigration," "Canada" and "move to Canada" has increased in the United States relative to the past seven days, according to Google Trends. Google reports that the search terms were particularly popular in Oregon, Washington, Vermont and California.

Meanwhile, Business Insider reported that a story called "How to move to Canada and become a Canadian citizen" was the top story on the site Tuesday night.

The Wayback Machine has an archive of the currently inaccessible site, if you're curious, including the page with information on "how you can immigrate to Canada."

Will anyone actually do it?

NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben took a long look at that question earlier this year.

"Every election, there's that chorus of people who insist they are moving to Canada if candidate so-and-so wins. Everyone knows these people. They're tweeting and Googling about it as you read this," she wrote. (Which is undoubtedly true right now.)

Determining how many people actually follow through is surprisingly difficult, Danielle found. The short answer is: a few, but probably for reasons more complicated than pure politics.