Immigration Canada's website has been besieged by information-seekers since US President George W. Bush won re-election last week, the agency's spokeswoman said. The agency's website usually gets about 20,000 visits a day, but the day after Bush's re-election, it skyrocketed to 115,628 before levelling off at a still dramatically higher 66,231 last Thursday, spokeswoman Maria Ladinardi said.
"It is huge, and it is continuing," she added, as on Saturday the 71,014 visits that originated in the United States represented 57.7 percent of the total, and the 45,227 hits seen on Sunday from the United States represented nearly 50 percent of all visits.
Whether it is a knee-jerk reaction to many passionate voters' pledges to leave the country if their candidate did not win or real interest from disillusioned Democrats is not yet clear, Ladinardi said.
But the website visits have not yet been matched by a surge in requests for work visas in Canadian consulates, she said.
"If these people are really interested in emigrating to Canada, such requests would be submitted in the coming six months," she said.
Between half a million and one million US nationals live in Canada, a number that increases by about 5,500 to 6,000 a year, Ladinardi said.