Liberals Look To Canada

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer comes a report that the Canadian Citizenship and Immigration Service website saw a spike in visitors when it was announced that President Bush had won reelection. According to spokeswoman Maria Iadinardi, website traffic jumped on Wednesday to 179,000 from a normal average of 20,000.

"It is still too early to tell whether any of these people will seek visas to come to Canada," Iadinardi says. In recent years, she says, Canada has issued around 5,000 resident visas each year to U.S. citizens, down from more than 20,000 during the draft evasion boom of the 1970s.

You can't just show up and be accepted, though. Permanent-residency applications to Canada can take from six months to three years to process.

I'm not so sure I buy that last part. From what I've heard, all you have to do is show up in Canada and they'll accommodate you. And, it doesn't seem to matter from where you came, whether Korea, the United States, or Yemen.

Anecdotally, the article relates that most of the summer homes on Canada's Pelee Island in Lake Erie are owned by Americans yet, according to Mayor Bill Krestel, there have been no inquiries about staying full time since the election. Also,

"Canada's system of democracy is even worse than yours," cautions Krestel, certainly not trying to garner any favor with the government of Prime Minister Paul Martin.

Interesting, eh?