After Trump’s second election victory, lots of Americans are talking about emigrating, most commonly to Canada. This happens with every rightwing election win[1], but nothing ever comes of it. With the real prospect of indefinite Trumpist rule, the issues are more serious, but it seems unlikely that much will happen. But why not?
It’s fairly well known that Americans rarely emigrate. There are, for example, only about a million US citizens living in Canada at the moment. Conversely, there are around a million Canadians living in the US. These are surprisingly low numbers for contiguous countries with a common language (except for Quebec) and relatively straightforward[2] paths to migration.
A detailed illustration of a U.S. passport with the text ‘US Paort’ on the cover, lying on top of a Canadian flag background. The Canadian flag’s red and white colors with the maple leaf design are vibrant and easily recognizable behind the passport. The setting is simple, with the passport angled slightly to showcase the modified cover design, creating a contrast between the blue of the passport and the red and white of the flag.
As usual ChatGPT didn’t quite get the text right
More generally, it’s a common rightwing talking point that the USA is the country most commonly named as a desired place to migrate to. What’s less remarked is that Donald Trump’s expressed desire for more migrants from “places like Denmark” reflects underlying reality. Migration from other rich countries to the US is very limited. In 2022, about 300 000 people (excluding tourists) from Europe arrived in the US, and the majority of these were students, most of whom would probably return. And Europe includes a lot of poor countries.
There’s a lot more migration between other rich countries, including between other Anglospheric countries. For example, although Canada has about a 10th of the population of the US, there are about half as many Canadians in Australia (50 000) as Americans (100 000).
The conclusion I draw is that the US is very different from other, superficially similar countries, I’ve visited the US on lots of occasions and had a couple of extended stays totalling two years. But it still seems a very foreign place to me, much more so than New Zealand or the UK, where I’ve been less frequently. And I imagine the same is true, in reverse, for Americans abroad.
Looking at the recent election results, they are in part a reflection of global trends (anti-incumbent, anti-migrant etc). But the vote for Trump was substantially higher than for most of the far-right policies in other countries. I think (hope) that this reflects some specifically American factors.
The option of moving to Canada is, for most Americans, an illusion. They will have to sort out their problems at home, as best they can.
fn1. In the event of a Democratic victory, there aren’t a lot of options for rightwingers, even ignoring practical difficulties. Lots of them have nice things to say about Hungary, but I think only Rod Dreher has moved there. Same in spades for Russia.
fn2. Migration is never easy. But, excluding moves within the EU, Canada-US migration seems to be about as straightforward as anywhere. CUSMA (formerly NAFTA) makes it relatively easy to get work permits, and thereby make the contacts needed for employer sponsorship.
{ 61 comments }
Matt 11.13.24 at 6:27 am
Trump’s first victory was a significant factor in my moving to Australia in 2017. It (obviously) wasn’t the only one. I had a job offer in Australia, and didn’t have anything lined up in the US. But, the possibility of Trump winning was one reason why I’d applied for the Australian job in the first place. His winning again has certainly made “going home” less attractive.
Having spent time in both place, NZ is certainly much more like Australia than either the US or Canada is. The regular migration between the two no doubt helps that. (The number of Kiwis in Australia is about 1/10 the total population of NZ.) The fact that there is not only visa free travel, but automatic work permission and an indefinite right to stay no doubt also makes this more common. But that also tells a bit against the story with the US and Canada, as lots of people move from NZ to Australia to make more money in jobs like being a barber, working in construction or restaurants, etc., and you can’t easily move from the US to Canada for that. (The CUSMA process is limited to certain select “professionals”, many, but not all, requiring advanced degrees, and a job offer – you can’t go, work, and then try to find a suitable job. And, the permits are temporary, not permanent, as far as I can tell.) Canada, like Australia, also makes it much harder for most “older” (meaning, increasingly hard for people over 40) people to migrate. This is to reduce burdens on the public health system.
A funny thing about there being about twice as many Americans in Australia as Canadians is that people very often ask me if I’m Canadian(*), and almost never ask if I’m from the US. I have a completely average non regionally distinct US accent. My guess is that the reason for this is that Canadians get pissy if you mistake them for Americans while Americans just find it slightly amusing if you mistake them for Canadians. I do usually then try to make a joke about moose and/or maple syrup when this happens.
(*) I actually find it slightly annoying and rude when people ask where I’m from. I almost never ask strangers this, and my impression is that it’s considered rude or too familiar by most people with good manners or sense in the US. But, I get asked it all the time – at least once a week, maybe more – in Australia. I try to not let it bother me, but it still seems rude to me.
Alex SL 11.13.24 at 6:59 am
I am lacking the perspective of a refugee. But to me as a migrant for career reasons, migration is relatively straightforward: is a job being offered, and is a visa being sponsored? Similar simplicity applies to family migration (e.g., middle-aged immigrants bringing their frail parent in to care for them, or cross-national marriages), or to studying in a foreign country and then staying because of the ties one has formed.
Point is, I suspect that to many people undertaking such migration, recent political events are relatively irrelevant to the decision. If that recent event is a pogrom against one’s ethnic group, okay, that is a different matter, but otherwise I expect “can I get a job”, “can I get a visa”, and “do I have friends there” to dominate the decision process. I know some Europeans who took up jobs in dictatorships or in religiously oppressive Gulf states. I have no reason to believe they wouldn’t take up a job in the USA under Trump.
And by the same logic, unless somebody is a hunted as a traitor or terrorist by the US government, nearly everybody is likely going to stay put and try to sit things out. As you write, migration is never easy.
Regarding your first footnote, I wonder if it ever gives right-wingers pause that the countries they admire are not attractive places to emigrate to, whereas the countries they describe as socialist basket cases are attractive destinations for e.g. exchange students and high-skilled workers.
Probably not.
SusanC 11.13.24 at 8:51 am
Welll, emigrating is a lot of hassle, and so you’ll need things to be really bad for it to seem worthwhile.
I do personally know transgender people who emigrated from the UK to the US to avoid anti-trans discrimination in the UK, and after Brexit a bunch of my friends moved to Europe. In the Brexit case, the forcing issue was losing their job (Brexit having caused their job to cease to exist) and the obvious source of alternative employment being across the English Channel.
And in other news, Bitcoin is up. Having had a quick look to check, there certainly are Silk Road like underground sources for hormones. No idea whether we yet have the SilkRoad of abortion drugs, not having looked that hard, but wouldn’t surprise me.
Robert Weston 11.13.24 at 10:17 am
On current trends, Canada will have a pro-fossil fuels, anti-diversity, anti-trans Conservative government by this time next year. Another factor that may discourage actual, or at least talk of, U.S. political immigration there.
Matt 11.13.24 at 10:45 am
Point is, I suspect that to many people undertaking such migration, recent political events are relatively irrelevant to the decision. If that recent event is a pogrom against one’s ethnic group, okay, that is a different matter, but otherwise I expect “can I get a job”, “can I get a visa”, and “do I have friends there” to dominate the decision process.
I knew several personally several people who left Russia recently. In one case, the father of a family who was (offically, at least) a military reservist fled to kazakhstan when the mobilization started. But, his wife didn’t want to leave, supposedly because she was worried about the future available for their children. In another case the people moved to Georgia. Their standard of living took a hit, and the difficulty finding appropriate work was a serious issue. I know a few other cases, but less well – acquaintances rather than friends. In all of these cases questions about the ability to get work, to fit in, language issues, parents who were middle class in Russia worrying what the situation for their kids would be, played a big role. These are all well educated and experienced people, but their options for picking where to get a visa are not great. None of these people were facing a situation that would have made them plausible candidates for a refugee visa, but did face situations that were, at best, very unpleasant politically.
No idea whether we yet have the SilkRoad of abortion drugs, not having looked that hard, but wouldn’t surprise me.
So far, at least, the regular mail works just fine, and there are organizations in the US that will mail abortion drugs to people who want them. One of the dreams of Trump-affiliated maniacs, though, it to revive the Comstock act, making it a felony to ship such thing through the mail. We’ll see, I guess.
John Q 11.13.24 at 10:50 am
@Susan C I was just wondering whether the Dark Web was still a thing, given that every other use case for BitCoin (licit purchases and sales, blockchain apps, NFTs etc) has failed. But I don’t think that’s enough to support the current market. Two hypotheses
(a) it’s an outlet for gambling, and the losses from various scams are less than the house tax (including taxes) in casinos etc
(b) it’s a long-running bubble, and will collapse one day
Charles Bakker 11.13.24 at 12:03 pm
Minor addition to the conversation, but when I was considering which grad schools to apply for back in 2016-2017, I did not even consider American schools. This was not a reflection on those schools, but a reflection on my unwillingness to move my family into the only G20 nation to also have the dubious distinction of being in the top ten countries for gun violence per capita. Add to that a lack of equitable access to health care and a MAGAlomaniac in the White House, and you can understand why I still have no desire to live in the States. I say all these things as a Canadian who has spent his life less than an hour and a half from the border.)
NomadUK 11.13.24 at 1:07 pm
Left the US in 2003 for the UK, which was EU and had the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme going, which supplied one with a work permit even without a job lined up. I was already, at the time, too old for Canada and Australia, even with my qualifications, and I wasn’t sufficiently fluent in any languages to make other countries feasible.
I didn’t miss the US one bit, and had no intention of ever returning; I loved living in the UK and acquired citizenship. For (very) personal reasons, I returned to the US ten years ago. I miss England, though I’m in a pleasant enough and perfectly tolerable location. Since then there’s been Brexit and a second Trump victory, and I have never been so depressed in my life.
Nonetheless, I have my British passport, and I would return in a heartbeat if the situation allowed for it. I see the UK’s problems — and there are many — as tractable, with much effort, but the US as fundamentally flawed, unfixable without a major change in constitution, governance, and mindset, and none of those is likely anytime soon.
Trader Joe 11.13.24 at 1:22 pm
I had occasion to be an American Expat in Canada (specifically Toronto) many years ago and I can say the experience and transition were pretty easy.
Naturally everyone will have their own experience, but the two things most notably different were healthcare and sports.
Healthcare was notably better and easy to navigate. Sports was decidedly worse (from an American eye). Plenty of hockey and NBA coverage but baseball and the NFL were limited, golf didn’t get much either and certainly none of the college athletics were available at that time. Auto racing was decent coverage if you like that. Maybe its different now (this was circa 2010-12).
I’d do it again if the opportunity arose.
Not to derail – but JQ you need to update your views on crypto. Average daily trading volume is approaching $500 billion and that’s not all elicit money (for perspective the daily volume in A$ is about $150 billion). Wall St. has made a business out of this and all of the biggest trading houses have departments devoted to it. The likes of Blackrock and Fidelity have main-streamed it and its unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon. Not to say its a good investment for all who hold it, but your view of it as a creature of the dark web is several years out of date.
Tom Slee 11.13.24 at 2:32 pm
The imminent question of emigration is whether the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants look to move, and I’m far from sure that “nothing will come of it”. Perhaps the OP is excluding this group as not “American”? But it’s a major topic here in Canada, for obvious reasons, and I don’t see any easy answers.
Citoyen du Monde 11.13.24 at 3:42 pm
Visiting the US (and any other country, for that matter) is not equal to the experience of immigrating to the country to live there.
I left the US after 2016 (it took another year to finally leave), arriving in the EU in 2017. Since then I spent 5 1/2 months living in the UK before immigrating to Germany, where I applied and received residency. My ultimate goal, where I am now, was France and after three years in Germany I was able to apply for a visa and residency in France.
Canada has age and income restrictions that do not make it easy to move there from the US and until you actually deal with the eccentricities of each country’s immigration policies, it is misleading to talk about them.
Yes, Americans are really not emigrating, but that situation may be changing in the next 90-odd days. Time will tell just here they go, but they are in for a rude surprise if they think it will be an easy process, even if they do speak the language.
Doug K 11.13.24 at 6:21 pm
Matt said,
“I actually find it slightly annoying and rude when people ask where I’m from. I almost never ask strangers this, and my impression is that it’s considered rude or too familiar by most people with good manners or sense in the US. ”
Not my experience, nor my wife’s experience, nor any immigrant’s experience in the US.
My wife eventually developed a Southern accent specifically to answer this question with, “my daddy farmed hogs in Alabama” which shuts the questioner up nicely. These days I say I am from Denver, to which the usual response is ‘but where are you really from’.
As Citoyen says,
“Canada has age and income restrictions that do not make it easy to move there from the US and until you actually deal with the eccentricities of each country’s immigration policies, it is misleading to talk about them.”
Exactly so. Those who talk lightly of emigrating have not yet looked at the qualifications for immigration. It is no longer possible for us to immigrate to another country, as we are not rich enough or young enough. My parents tried to move to Australia to be with my brother and his family. After six years residence their application was finally denied after my father’s heart attack, and they were deported.
Billy BB 11.13.24 at 7:40 pm
Trader Joe: Just because there are hundreds of millions of dollars a day being transferred between cryptocurrency wallets doesn’t mean there’s anyone buying goods or services using it; it’s all just algorithmic day trading, and probably mostly wash trading which is of course not illegal.
Show us what you can buy with it apart from burgers in a staged transaction, and then there would be some reason to revise people’s opinions of its uses besides separating retail dollars from their owners for the benefit of investors.
Matt 11.13.24 at 8:23 pm
Doug K said: “Not my experience, nor my wife’s experience, nor any immigrant’s experience in the US.”
Well, I don’t mean to deny your our your wife’s experience – but then, my wife was an immigrant to the US long before she was one to Australia, and for longer, and she reports that it’s much more common to be asked this here than where we lived in the US – Philadelphia, New York City and… Denver. It is true that some parts of the US are much more nosy than other parts – with the South being the worst offender, in my experience (*) – but the level of every-day intrusivness still seems much higher to both of us here in Australia.
(*) A former professor of mine, a mixed-race woman who really does have an indistinct ethnic look, once told me that she hated to go to the South in the US, because there, unlike other places in the US, people regularly asked her where she was “really” from, even though the answer to that was “New York City.”
I’m sorry, but not surprised, to hear about the experience of your parents in Australia. Unless one is willing to pay out very large fees (more than $50,000 the last time I looked, but I haven’t looked for a couple of years and the fees only go up) immigration for parents is very slow and difficult. And, the desire to reduce stress on the public health care system is also a real burden for many immigrants here.
Suzanne 11.13.24 at 8:37 pm
The fact is that most people’s lives are not going to change very much if Trump’s second term resembles his first. The people who do leave will likely be mainly deportees and last time Trump did not succeed in deporting more people than Obama, as Florida governor Ron DeSantis has pointed out. If Trump runs a more efficient operation this time around, things could be very different, obviously.
Not sure even the Democrats believe their darkest rhetoric. Harris’ concession speech was surprisingly upbeat given she had just lost conclusively to the new Hitler, the Obamas issued an emollient statement about the peaceful transmission of power and Biden is positively glowing.
Supergreen 11.13.24 at 9:07 pm
American who went to uni in Canada during the Obama years, politics wasn’t really the reason besides maybe a general sense that I didn’t feel very American after the Bush years.
After Trump was elected, I did move to the EU, but I was also fairly young at the time. Mostly I moved for personal reasons, but you could say that Trump’s election was what pushed me over the edge to make the decision. You could also say that any one of the other reasons was what pushed me over the edge. Looking back on it, I think even a regular Republican would have encouraged me to leave because of how much I saw my parents have to spend on health care.
Trump’s horribleness and the possibility (now the reality) of his reelection are why I have no plan to ever move back.
J-D 11.13.24 at 10:53 pm
Do you not think that’s a big ‘if’?
Just so!
As a general principle, it’s always possible to find points of resemblance between any two things if you seek them assiduously enough and it’s also always possible to find points of distinction between any two things if you seek them assiduously enough, so no matter how it turns out the second term will be like the first in some ways and different from it in some ways. How much it will resemble the first term is not something I would be prepared to estimate at this stage.
One thing I will say is that Donald Trump’s second Presidency is going to make a lot of people suffer severely. But how many is ‘a lot’? One hundredth of the US population would be a lot of people; so would one third, or anything in between those two figures. Even thirty thousand people would be a lot of people, and that would be only 1% of 1% of the US population. Severe suffering for thirty thousand people would not be a prospect that I would contemplate with equanimity.
J-D 11.13.24 at 11:00 pm
Incidentally, for anybody who is interested in estimating how Donald’s second administration is likely to resemble the first and how it’s likely to be different, you could try reading about the people he’s announced as Cabinet nominees.
hix 11.13.24 at 11:49 pm
My guess would be, the US still is a rather good place to go to if you are in good health and move from your rich countries upper 15% to the US upper 15%. Especially since you can keep your old passport and cultural/lingual knowledge as a safety option. For the rest, mobility is rather difficult in the first place.
Ironically, I did consider doing a term abroad in the US or Australia during my current occupational therapy degree for a second. Turned out, our international office had no clue and clearly did not bother to get informed how to deal with pre-existing health conditions of students and health insurance in such countries. Guess it would have worked out for me, at least in Australia, but I still stopped for the headache of getting insurance coverage figured out on my own. Not a huge issue for me, but I’d very much like the international office at least bother to give equal chances to young disabled students that study to get a job.
maxhgns 11.14.24 at 2:50 am
Does this phenomenon exist anywhere else? (Maybe the UK at the height of the Brexit saga?)
It’s just, you see waves of Americans saying that every time Republicans win. It seems to betray a kind of attitude towards Canada–that it’s yours to hide in–that I don’t care for.
To be clear, it’s not the actual immigration that rubs me the wrong way (I’m all for ‘no borders, no nations’, and for vastly increasing our resettlement of refugees, and it seems perfectly fine to me that Americans might want to seek refuge from their own government). It’s the entitlement I resent (especially, the whole performative utterance with no actual desire to emigrate backing it up), which I guess comes from living my life in a US client kingdom.
Alex SL 11.14.24 at 3:01 am
Suzanne,
Indeed the incoherence of communications is amazing to watch from outside, and it is unlikely to make people take Democrats more seriously. Every election is the most important of our times, and Trump is uniquely awful, yet the result is business as usual and solicitation of election donations as the primary mechanism of action. I am not a communications strategist, but it doesn’t take one to see that the intended audience may at some point start asking questions.
None of this means that vulnerable minorities won’t suffer suppression, or some of them may seek refuge in other countries. But if you expect a dictatorship, then you have to have a better strategy than bipartisan efforts in congress and press declarations; and if you expect get-the-vote-out to still matter in four years, then it looks disingenuous to call the other lot a unique danger to democracy. Pick one.
(For the record, I’d pick the box where a new strategy is needed. Don’t want to imply that I am optimistic here. Unless everything falls apart for Trumpists due to incompetence and infighting, the outcome of the next few years could well be a modern authoritarianism: Elections, but virtually unwinnable for the opposition. Theoretical rule of law, but the judiciary so stacked with cronies that the laws don’t matter. Journalists not locked up in labour camps, but uppity news outlets having their licence pulled or a crony installed as editor in chief. No armed commissar standing next to the professor to ensure they teach party line, but funding being pulled from universities that don’t self-censor. Etc. Gimme donations isn’t going to solve that. And again I note that the last few years have already been on that slope to some degree, especially at the state level.)
Bob 11.14.24 at 4:17 am
Hey Trader Joe, @9, what I just don’t understand about bitcoin, and I think this is the problem for most people, is how it can have value without being used for anything, like a commodity or land, or offering interest like a bond, or participation in future earnings like a stock. It just seems to be about itself. I will grant you, though, that the argument that I am making is wearing thin, given the trading volumes and prices for bitcoin and how long it has been around.
MisterMr 11.14.24 at 7:10 am
A rather OT question, but:
Why is asking “where are you from” a bad question?
I would surely ask this without thinking of being offensive, and I think if I was a migrant I wouldn’t be offended by it (after all if people ask is because they already perceive me as a non local).
Moz of Yarramulla 11.14.24 at 8:43 am
Remember that it’s mostly young people who migrate, either as refugees, immigrants or illegally. I suppose also remember there’s a difference between refugees and illegal immigrants.
So a bunch of 40+ or 50+ year olds whinging that it’s too hard to migrate is kind of missing the point. Migration is all about under-30’s, often graduates or skilled trades, deciding that thanks for the investment in my education I’m outta here. Russia seems to have given the boot to a whole generation via the war, with a marked exodus of middle class young adults who don’t want to die.
I wonder whether we’ll see the same with especially young women from the USA deciding that as recent grads or having finished their apprenticeships they’re ready to see if Canada/Australia/Bermuda really are the third world shitholes they’re promoted as. That’s the group I’d look at if I wanted to see migration trends.
Matt 11.14.24 at 10:54 am
Why is asking “where are you from” a bad question?
I would surely ask this without thinking of being offensive, and I think if I was a migrant I wouldn’t be offended by it
I’m not offended by it, but I’m slightly annoyed by it when asked by strangers, as it’s simply none of their business. My wife (who is Russian) has always been annoyed by it, because, even before the current mess, people took it as an opportunity to engage in various expressions of stereotypes. Recently, she’s had the unpleasant (and at first quite surpirsing) experience of a few different people working at farmers’ markets in Australia expressing their admiration for Putin. But mostly, again, it’s simply none of their business.
MFB 11.14.24 at 11:44 am
My brother-in-law was a Brexit migrant, to Canada. (He’d left South Africa after a failed marriage, nothing to do with apartheid.) He’s found it rather unlike what he expected and is contemplating moving back to Europe if he can.
I think a lot of people talk very big about emigrating for political reasons and then don’t. Admittedly I’m on the left, and it’s not quite such a big thing on this side of the fence. A lot of white South Africans dashed off to the Dominions in fear of what might happen under a black government (sadly, some of what they feared has been realised, though arguably most of it was in the pipeline even before apartheid ended). Liberals had earlier dashed off only, for the most part, if they could find better jobs elsewhere than they could get at home. Leftists mostly couldn’t expect better jobs, so stayed.
One interesting question, by the way; what ever happened to “Stay and contribute to the struggle” which was a big thing in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s?
roger gathmann 11.14.24 at 12:18 pm
Migrating from one white colony to another is, well, the history of white colonies.
CHETAN R MURTHY 11.14.24 at 5:25 pm
Matt @ 25: I would add that there is only one way to ask the question, and it is
(1) by first offering one’s own heritage as an example,
and (2) asking only with an air of embarrassment and apology
and (3) when receiving an answer, take it and STFU
I witnessed my mom getting asked the question -repeatedly-, starting with “where are you from” (to which she answered “around here” — which was true, since we’d lived in the area since 1975) and and finishing with “no, where are you REALLY from”.
That’s not a polite inquiry, or polite conversation. That’s badgering designed to make the recipient feel less of an American.
CHETAN R MURTHY 11.14.24 at 5:29 pm
Bob @ 22: haha, but you’re wrong! there are lots of uses for cryptocurrency!
(1) money-laundering
(2) capital flight
(3) funding espionage and subversion
(4) ransomware
There are no -legitimate- uses, and that is patently obvious to anybody who studies cryptocurrency in any detail. It’s ridiculously unscalable technology, and the bolt-on fixes to -make- it scalable render it no less centralized than the current international money system (of central banks and SWIFT), except that the central crypto nodes are all controlled by ….. companies and other nongovernmental operators.
So why is there so much trading? B/c a lot of people see that there is a robust international market for money laundering services, and they want a piece of the pie for being intermediaries.
Suzanne 11.14.24 at 5:40 pm
@21: Indeed.
@17: I do not mean to minimize the potential harm Trump can do, I was noting the cognitive dissonance induced by dire warnings of incipient fascism replaced with bonhomous photo ops.
I will say that Trump’s conduct of the transition, with the rushed nominations of mostly absurd people to posts for which they are ludicrously unqualified, is encouraging to some extent. The degree of control he’ll exert over an already supine GOP with majorities in both houses of Congress is not.
American_In_Canada 11.14.24 at 6:46 pm
To an American who moved to Canada for work halfway through their career, this post is… confusing.
Americans don’t emigrate to Canada for two reasons: (1) because it is not nearly as straightforward a picture as you paint (the comparison to Australia is daft: there is no working holiday visa option for Americans, like there is for Aussies/Canadians), and (2) because there is almost zero incentive to do so.
To move, one effectively has to have a job offer in a set of skilled professions, and go through the hassle of emigrating. But why? For skilled professionals, salaries in the US are, in almost all industries*, higher than they are in Canada, sometimes (like in tech) by multiples (the goal of most skilled professionals in Canada I know is to get a remote job with a US company).
So you are talking about taking a pay cut to move to a country with a markedly higher cost of living. Please, ignore those stupid cost of living calculators, as they report nonsense like “the cost of rent is 20% higher in Seattle than in Vancouver” — despite if you look at regional data, you see that it’s about 50% higher (nominally) in Vancouver. Despite average salaries in Vancouver being ~62k CAD, whereas in Seattle it’s ~76k USD. So, on average, you’re paying a (much) higher percentage of a (much) lower salary.
Maybe you want to buy? Average home price in Canada is 720k CAD, in the US it is 420k USD. And that is not taking into account quality: 52.6% of Canadian homes are single-family houses, whereas that figure is 67% for Americans. And homes are, on average, significantly (30–40%) larger. This, despite surveys reporting similar preferences among Americans and Canadians when it comes to housing.
Absent grain and softwood lumber, Everything. Costs. More. In. Canada. I travel between the two countries every month, and do almost all my purchases of consumer durables in the US. Then there is the quality and selection. Half—at least—as many options for any given thing you might want (every other trip I’m bringing something back for a friend because it literally cannot be purchased in Canada). You can just look at the rules of the border: on the southern side there are mailbox stores for people to come across to pick stuff up, and the US doesn’t start slapping huge duties (typically 25–40%) on things you have shipped to you once they hit the whopping $40 CAD threshold.
And, when it comes to food, if you think American produce is bad, boy will you love Canadian! Less flavor, when it’s not being sold after it’s started to go bad…
Health care? Again, it’s educated professionals that can easily move from the US to Canada. Only someone who does not regularly use each system could possibly think the situation is better north of the border (for educated professionals — again, the type of immigrant Canada is happy to let in). How do you feel about waiting 2–4 weeks for an x-ray, and 13(!)-months for an MRI, instead of getting it same or next-day? How about instead of getting a surgery scheduled for some point in the next month that works for your schedule, being told you will be contacted in 3–6 months and given a slot (or, for more complicated surgeries, being on a 3-year waitlist like people I know)? Note, for those people who lived in Canada >5 years ago: every single Canadian I know laments at how truly awful Canadian health care has become, and swears up and down it didn’t used to be this way. Regardless of the veracity of those claims, they paint a clear picture of where things are at now.
Yes, gun violence is far lower in Canada. Property crime, not so much. Car thefts? Far, far higher. And maybe one likes a justice system where people who rape teenagers, brag about it, and are unrepentant in court serve two years prison time… but I have yet to meet a single Canadian who thinks their justice system isn’t completely screwed up.
*one exception is academia (guess my profession!), where for your _average_ academic things are better in Canada. But note at the top end they are decidedly not, as both UBC and UofT largely refuse to meet high-paying offers from truly elite (top-50 or so by pay, not necessarily by global status, see, for example Rice) U.S. schools. And given Canadian academia is even more built on the precarious house of cards that is foreign students (there are as many foreign tertiary students in Canada as there are in the U.S., despite a fraction of the total population), this may not continue to be the case.
somebody who remembers the 30 million american deportees 11.14.24 at 7:38 pm
I agree with the OP. Canada is unlikely to see much migration. However, the next administration has promised to, and certainly will, deport between 11 and 30 million people to mexico (depending on which official and which day you ask) – families with one member whose immigration paperwork is wrong, families with citizenship granted by birthright in the past, families that disagree too assiduously with the administration (“the enemy within”, they are called, and will be treated as.) that is the primary american migrant population that other nations will need to absorb. Mexico may only be the first stop in a crisis that will move downwards through central and south america.
engels 11.14.24 at 8:02 pm
I’m slightly annoyed by it when asked by strangers, as it’s simply none of their business
Presumably that’s also true of “are you having a good time” and “do you come here often”.
engels 11.14.24 at 8:17 pm
Americans don’t emigrate to Canada… because there is almost zero incentive to do so.
What about saying “eh” after every sentence?
Matt 11.14.24 at 8:20 pm
For what it’s worth, a lot of what American_in_Canada_ says about living in Canada as an American is true of Australia as well, except that: fresh fruits and vegetables are generally pretty easily available and reasonably priced, with tropical fruits and “Asian” vegetables typically being pretty nice and relatively cheap. (For some reason bananas have been not great this year, though – maybe weather.) But, other food is more expensive and generally of worse quality than in the US (with regional exceptions). And, while my experience is that I pay more for health care “out of pocket” and as a percentage of my income than I did in the US, and receive what seems to me to be worse care, (*) it is still generally pretty good care, and I have not had a hard time scheduling things. For an X-ray, for example, it’s easy to just go up to a clinic and get one the same day, or make an appointment in the same week. It’s been the same for me for more complicated things, although for some I have had to pay a fair amount (as in a few hundred dollars) out of pocket. (This is for tests that, 1) my doctor wanted and 2) no amount of waiting would have made available for free or even less under Medicare.)
But, housing is more expensive and of worse quality, as are many other things, and salaries for professionals (inclduing academics) are lower for more work and worse working conditions. These things surely contribute to comparatively low migration from the US to Australia. (Contrast with NZ, which has high migration to Australia – with Australia having higher wages, lower costs on most things, and easier access to health care than NZ. It’s not a surprise the flow is mostly one-way.)
(*) I was lucky to always have good health insurance in the US, and no doubt if you have bad health insurance, or none, the health care is poor indeed, but if you have good health insurance, in my experience both access and the percentage of your income you’ll spend, and quality, favor the US over Australia.
Ted Nannicelli 11.14.24 at 9:16 pm
A second term of W. was enough for my wife and to get out of Dodge for good. Of course there are all sorts of reasons people who say they’re going to emigrate don’t end up doing so. But surely it’s an overstatement to say that “nothing ever comes of [this talk]” after every right-wing election in the U.S.
Alex SL 11.14.24 at 9:35 pm
“Where are you from?” is context-dependent. When people in a cosmopolitan community, like, say, the staff at a research agency, compare notes, and especially when the questioner is also a migrant, it is inoffensive. When somebody insistently asks the question and doesn’t accept a city in their own country as the response because they think the person they are asking has too much melanin, it is offensive. Other scenarios are variously between these two poles.
Regarding “crypto”: as Chetan R Murphy wrote. The charitable case is that it is, for many people, unregulated gambling. Maybe you approve of suckers being separated from their money, it is their own fault if they do it, etc. I disagree, but I can see the argument. The less charitable case involves ransomware and evading financial regulations that were introduced for very excellent reasons such as protecting investors, making crime more difficult, and avoiding enormous stock market crashes. Crypto is the financial equivalent of writing “not a car” onto your car so that you can drive at 180 km/h through a school zone, and the traffic police letting you get away with it because, look, they wrote that it isn’t a car!
Matt,
Although I must admit not having spent more than a few days in the USA, as an immigrant in Australia I find it extremely difficult to believe that the USA have better quality food and better working conditions than Australia. The USA have famously low food regulations and various important states with at-will employment. Musk firing an engineer on the spot because he did not like a technical explanation would not work out well for him in most other countries. Agreed with the quality of houses in Australia, though; although I cannot judge that of the USA from direct experience, it seems unlikely that the building industry there could be as broken as the one here.
Health care is the obvious benefit of being outside of the USA. Recently, I was discussing our experiences with the Australian health care system with a few colleagues over lunch – waiting times, quality of treatment, etc. A woman eating at the next desk table such interesting faces that I involved her in the conversation. Turned out she was a visiting scientist from the USA, and she then shared that she had had her first medical bankruptcy as a student, because of appendicitis. That just doesn’t happen in other countries, apart from those experiencing a collapse of the state, presumably.
Point is, I know several people who migrated from the USA to Australia for professional reasons.
RobinM 11.15.24 at 12:49 am
“I’m slightly annoyed by it when asked by strangers, as it’s simply none of their business”
Despite what the secondary and tertiary Scottish school system tried to do to my speech patterns (this in the days before working class regional accents became fashionable in the UK), and despite having lived in the USA for a great many years, people often say to me “are you Irish?” or “are you Scottish?”and once that’s cleared up they’ll go on to ask which part of Scotland I’m from. It’s not a question I mind; it even leads on occsion to pleasant conversations.
Only on one occasion was I at all nervous about it. I, with my longish hair,was passing through Chicago in 1968, a few weeks after the Democratic Convention. Not knowing where I was going, I asked a policeman for directions. As I was turning away he suddenly said quite loudly, “Come here!” In fear and trembling I walked back to him to be met with the question, “Are you Irish.” My Scottishness seemed quite acceptable to him
Given my own immigrant status in the US, I also find it quite fascinating to encounter people from so many places. And since my own experience with the question has always been pleasant, I assume, perhaps falsely, that others find it interesting too. So I’m prone to query others who have distinctive accents—but I am always careful to preface my query by pointing out my own status if they haven’t already raised the question.
To be sure, no matter how it identifies me in the UK, here in the US mine is a somewhat privileged accent, I suppose. But given that more and more people are becoming aware that Trump’s mother was a Scottish immigrant and given, too, that Rupert Murdoch has close Scottish connexions, there may be some places in the US where I’d better keep my mouth shut? Maybe I’ll have to move to a “red state”?
CHETAN R MURTHY 11.15.24 at 4:18 am
engels @33: there’s a difference (a very, very, very important difference) between “where are you from” and the other two queries you cite. I will leave it to you to figure out the difference.
Matt 11.15.24 at 7:50 am
Alex SL,
Given that you have, admittedly, only spent “a few days” in the US, and I lived there most of my life, and then lived for 5 years in Melbourne and 2 and half years in the Gold Coast, I’m going to insist that I know the differences between the US and Australia better than you do. And, I’ll say that you can find better food, more easily – more variety, higher quality, and cheaper – in many places in the US than in either Melbourne or the Gold Coast. This is so for restaurants, farmers’ markets, and grocery stores, of both “every day” (think Coles and Woolworths) and “higher” quality. Of course, there are exceptions. As noted, the tropical fruits are great in the Gold Coast (a bit less good in Melbourne, but not bad.) There’s some good fresh seafood here, too, (though not all that much better than I could buy easily in NY City.) But the general level in Australia is worse, and it’s more expensive. Because I’m more likely to live out my days in Australia than the US I wish that were not so, but it is.
On emplyment – the only place I meant to say anything about was in academic employment. (I don’t have enough experience otherwise to say. I have worked many jobs in the US, but only in academia in Australia.) There, it’s not close. Being an academic in the US is much better than being one in Australia in nearly every way, especially at comparable levels of schools. As for other jobs, I don’t know, so wouldnt’ say.
On health care, again, it depends on your insurance. If you have good insurance, as I was always lucky enough to have, the out of pocket expense for almost everything was less in the US than I pay in Australia, the wait times were generally similar or lower in the US (wait times have not been a problem for me here, so mostly I mean “low”, though I have heard some people here w/o private health insurance complain about wait times for things like knee surgury), and the total cost is similar – the cost of insurance for me in the US was actually less than what I pay for private health insurnance plus the higher taxes, by a fair amount. Now, I’d rather have the Australian system over-all. It’s fairer than the US one, and not bad. But, that’s not because the Australian one provides better service or is cheaper for people with good health insurance in the US, because that’s not so. Again, I speak as someone who has dealt with both systems. If you want to make an a prior or faith-based assessment, go ahead, but otherwise you might trust some real experience here.
Alex SL 11.15.24 at 11:16 am
Matt,
I take, then, your comparison as it applies to your area of employment, and with decent insurance through your employer. But it would take a lot to argue that working conditions broadly or access to affordable health care broadly are worse in any other developed country than in the USA of all places. It is possible that I, as somebody who hasn’t worked in the USA, am mistaken about this, but I base my beliefs in this matter on what various other people have reported, including US citizens.
For health care, we do not have private insurance in Australia, and we have no significant complaints so far with the public system, be it getting a routine GP appointment, my chin being stitched up after undignifiedly face-planting with my bicycle, or a life-saving surgery in the family. For working conditions, it is enough to follow the news and have some general awareness e.g. of how easily people in many parts of the USA can get fired or how US waiters are being kept dependent on tips, both of which places them in extremely asymmetric power relationships ripe for abuse.
But, that’s not because the Australian one provides better service or is cheaper for people with good health insurance in the US, because that’s not so.
Okay, but if I am a multi-millionaire, I may also have a more comfortable life in Haiti than I would while unemployed in Switzerland. That is at the same time obvious but also completely irrelevant to any comparison of two systems. The question isn’t what happens to you if you belong to the privileged, it is what happens if you don’t.
More generally, that appears to be the fascinating blind spot of many comparisons where the USA come out as having superior quality of life. I remember a Republican politician saying how much worse Denmark was than the USA because taxes there are so high that people cannot even afford a nanny. That, of course, implies that the nannies themselves are not people and thus don’t count. The implicit comparison is always, am I better off here or there as a rich person?
noone1 11.15.24 at 1:22 pm
Once, during a friendly conversation, I said something critical about American healthcare system to a parent of my daughter’s classmate, and she replied: if you don’t like it, why don’t you go back where you came from?
I remember I was shocked first, but then I realized that it was was alright. I decided to leave my country and became a guest, nay, more like a rent-free long-term tenant, in hers. Her country was kind enough to accept, to welcome me. I needed to be more humble, courteous, and less sensitive. Appreciate more and complain less. Or go back where I came from. YMMV.
MisterMr 11.15.24 at 3:05 pm
@noone1
So if I go to France because I find a job in France and not in Italy, I have no right to complain about anything in France? It seems a bit excessive.
engels 11.15.24 at 7:03 pm
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674276604
Makes you think
engels 11.15.24 at 7:33 pm
“Where are you from” is inherently offensive is a good example of why American liberalism in its current form isn’t a vote winner and doesn’t export well imho (which isn’t to say there aren’t situations in which it can be used in an offensive or even racist way).
CHETAN R MURTHY 11.16.24 at 3:14 am
noone1 @ 42: Perhaps there was some context to that conversation that you haven’t described, that made your interlocutor’s response appropriate. But I’ll just say (as an American, came here age 4 in 1969, been a citizen since 1982), that that person was a dick. There is a certain kind of American who believes that everything about our country is better than in any other country. Everything. There’s a saying: “America, love it or leave it.” But others believe “America, love it AND fix it”. The former is the relationship that infants have with their parents: parents can do no wrong, and are all-powerful. The latter is the relationship that adult children have with their parents: parents can be wrong, and we try to help them do better.
Adult Americans (unlike your interlocutor) welcome new information from foreigners, b/c we recognize that not everything about our country is great, and lots never has been.
I’m sorry you got that response: it was completely uncalled-for.
dilbert dogbert 11.16.24 at 4:08 pm
Re: The Stress In Moving
Even moving from a Red State to a Blue State is difficult. Also moving between locations in a Blue State is stressful.
We moved from Silly Con Valley to this place in the Gamma Quadrant 15 years ago and its took 2 years to get settled in. Now we are downsizing from horse property to a place on the right side of the canyon. I expect it will take another two years to settle in. Factor in all the political horseshit we will have to put up with.
divelly 11.16.24 at 6:10 pm
In our 45 years of marriage we have moved 37 times!
True, 10 of those were in 6 months in Charlotte Amalie, during the 50th anniversary of the Carnival while awaiting the arrival of our boat which was pirated by a delivery captain who sold everything of value off the boat before being apprehended in the Turks and Caicos.
We drove across the USA coast to coast 4 times.
We sailed from the USVI to Fl with 2 dogs.
We lived in NY(twice), FL(twice), MT,WA(twice) and NV.
No worries!
Sean 11.16.24 at 6:57 pm
Since John Quiggin is Australian, New Zealand is a good parallel for why Canadians are more likely to migrate to the USA than Americans are to Canada (its a smaller economy with a lot of thinly-populated land whose infrastructure is expensive to maintain). There was a trade book called “Maximum Canada” which went into detail, and I have seen an economics paper tracing the gap in real incomes back two or three hundred years.
noone1 11.16.24 at 8:25 pm
“Perhaps there was some context to that conversation that you haven’t described, that made your interlocutor’s response appropriate.”
Yes. I remember the response, but I don’t remember what I said exactly to provoke it. There is a huge difference between ‘American healthcare is great but the health insurance system could use some improvement’ and ‘American healthcare is crap’. And know I could say, back then, ‘American healthcare is crap’; it’s possible.
Sophie Jane 11.16.24 at 9:59 pm
@Susan C
My sense is that DIY hormones mostly don’t come from the dark web. Or at least not estrogen – testosterone is a controlled substance, for reasons of patriarchy. (It’s the “strong, dangerous” hormone, culturally speaking.) But both E and T are widely available and commonly prescribed for cis people so black market availability should stay solid if it came to that.
CHETAN R MURTHY 11.17.24 at 6:49 am
noone1 @ 50: but “American healthcare is crap” is an accurate statement. It’s wildly overpriced, and every part of the system is designed to extract as much money as possible from every other part of the system, and from patients. Every part of the system spends resources to deny every other part of the system payments, too. So there is enormous deadweight loss, as so many parts of system spends resources trying to swindle other parts And of course, everybody’s trying to swindle patients. And then you get into the actual results we get for all that eye-watering expense, and it’s just not very impressive. And until Obamacare, between inability to get insurance due to pre-existing conditions, rescission, and medical bankruptcy, it was a goddamned farce of a healthcare system. And from what I read, medical bankruptcy is still a big problem.
I have a Greek friend who came to the US for his CS PhD, then found work here at an Internet company. Making a ton of money. He had some health problems, and was very willing to spend that money to get to the front of the line. It didn’t help: he still had enormous trouble getting doctors, therapists to help him. Eventually he gave up, went back to Greece, and got treatment there. I remember he told me about this one doctor he went to, with this pile of tests and imaging he’d had done, based on the doctor’s recommendations. The doctor was -shocked- that he’d gotten all those tests and imaging done so quickly, b/c typically it takes months to arrange it all. Why? B/c my friend had gone full-time on just chasing up the stuff. Whereas in Greece, he didn’t have to, b/c (as he told me) the assumption is that a patient doesn’t have the energy and knowledge to do it. Needless to say, he got the care he needed in Greece, and he’s much better now. Not healed, but much better. Whereas he was getting worse in the US.
And we’re not even getting into the kind of care that poor people get. Periodically we read articles about these traveling dental camps that show up in Appalachia, and the frightful condition of people there, the shit they suffer thru b/c dental care is expensive, and they’re poor.
And on and on and on. No, you’re right to say that “American health care is crap.”
Last anecdote: I remember when a German (I think it was — some European in any case) tourist got his leg broken in some US state. The doctors wouldn’t even -set- the damn bone. They were willing to stabilize him, and basically his home country sent a goddamn jet plane to take him home. The doctors weren’t willing to set the bone, b/c they weren’t going to get paid. Imagine it. It got written up in the newspapers.
Tom Perry 11.18.24 at 4:29 pm
“The doctors wouldn’t even -set- the damn bone…b/c they weren’t going to get paid.”
That’s not how medical ethics works, in America or anywhere else. I guarantee you, the patient refused care.
“What’ll it cost me?”
“This many dollars. We’ll bill you later.”
“Screw that, I’ll fly home.”
“It might not be safe.”
“Screw it, I say! I’ll fly home.”
John Q 11.18.24 at 7:34 pm
Matt,
Having lived a bit in both places, I didn’t have your experience on health care. I lived in the US with my wife and two kids the early 1990s. Was insured with Kaiser, expensive and low quality. I didn’t use the health care system at all on my more recent solo stay.
As regards food, I’d say it’s uniformly pretty good in Australia, massively more variable in the US.
On housing, you’re 100% correct. That’s the big disincentive for an American moving here. But lots of other people come from wealth countries with relatively cheap housing.
hix 11.18.24 at 7:42 pm
“Last anecdote: I remember when a German (I think it was — some European in any case) tourist got his leg broken in some US state. The doctors wouldn’t even -set- the damn bone. They were willing to stabilize him, and basically his home country sent a goddamn jet plane to take him home. The doctors weren’t willing to set the bone, b/c they weren’t going to get paid. Imagine it. It got written up in the newspapers.”
To be fair, that sounds like the doctor was just stupid, because he would have got paid at a pretty high rate. Because if he got flown home on a medical plane, he had travel insurance which would have covered it.
hix 11.18.24 at 7:45 pm
Anyway, i’d know a similar anecdote about the NHS in the UK – the German person obviously was eligible for coverage (back during the EU days), but had no paperwork, and they would just move no finger in an emergency.
engels 11.18.24 at 8:57 pm
…Compared with nine other high-income nations, the United States ranked last overall this year, with a lower life expectancy and higher rates of death and disease despite spending the most on health care, according to the report, released Thursday by the independent research group The Commonwealth Fund…
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/19/health/health-care-rankings-high-income-nations-commonwealth-report/index.html
novakant 11.18.24 at 9:27 pm
Why is asking “where are you from” a bad question?
Not always. But it depends hugely on context and generally speaking it defines you as a member of the out-group. And it is boring for the one who has to respond to it, as they have been responding to the very same question hundreds of times.
novakant 11.18.24 at 9:31 pm
London is a bit of a different story, because almost half of the people were born abroad, and then there are the second and third generation immigrants and then the people having come from all over the UK – so almost everyone is a bit of an outsider.
John Q 11.19.24 at 12:24 am
Novakant @59
Australia is like a large London in that respect. 30 per cent born overseas, and lots of internal migration. So, the answer to “where are you from” is usually “somewhere else”.
Mass immigration hasn’t stopped some brutal treatment of asylum-seekers, or restrictions on international students, but it makes a broader anti-immigrant politics unsustainable, as a series of failed attempts has shown.
engels 11.19.24 at 1:15 am
it is boring for the one who has to respond to it, as they have been responding to the very same question hundreds of times
See also:
“How are you?”
“What is your name?”
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