As Donald Trump was voted as the 45th American President on Wednesday (November 09), the immediate aftermath of the situation was born by Canadian immigration website which crashed due to heavy traffic posting a "500 - Internal server error" message.
It seems not only celebs but many other US citizens are planning to flee Trump’s presidency. The tycoon confounded polls predicting he would lose to Hillary Clinton.
The official website for 'Citizenship and Immigration Canada' was made inaccessible to visitors during the US election vote “as a result of a significant increase in the volume of traffic," said Lisa Filipps, spokeswoman for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
Moving to live in Canada involves applying to get permanent residency in the country. Canada’s website usually offers ways of applying either to live in or become a citizen of the country but the people accessing the site at that point of time could see only long loading page with no proper access.
“Shared Services Canada worked through the night and continues to work to resolve the issue to ensure that the website is available for users as soon as possible," said a spokeswoman.
The website was restored the next morning, however, it was running slow.
The problem was widely commented about on social media.
Canada's official Twitter account appeared to reference the election result in a tweet just as it became clear that Trump was about to win the race for the White House.
“In Canada, immigrants are encouraged to bring their cultural traditions with them and share them with their fellow citizens,” read the tweet.
There's no guarantee the two things were related, but given the loud insistence of many Americans, every election cycle, to move north in the event of an unfavorable outcome, it's not a huge leap to assume that some despondent voters were exploring options.
Celebrities including Bryan Cranston, Amy Schumer, Cher and Barbra Streisand have all declared their plans to flee under Trump presidency.
A similar rush for the exit was seen in the UK in the wake of the 2015 general election and this summer's Brexit vote.
Canada has been praised for taking in refugees from a range of countries in recent months. The government has run a campaign to welcome people fleeing the war in Syria, for instance.
