[HeX]

Thorn posted this over on WS, figured it might interest some here.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/11/04/gonorth041104.html

OTTAWA - Canada is starting to look like a pretty good place to live for thousands of Americans who are unhappy about George W. Bush winning the presidential election.

Canada's official immigration website is receiving a record number of visits since Bush won a second term, and most of the hits are from the U.S.

Within hours of Bush's acceptance speech Wednesday, six times more Americans than usual surfed the site.

There were about 179,000 visitors to the site Wednesday, almost twice the previous one-day record set last year. About 64 per cent of those visitors were Americans.

Skilled workers

A spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration said Thursday that the most-visited pages were the ones that let people check if they would qualify to move to Canada as skilled workers.

But the spokesperson said it's too early to tell whether the record number of inquiries will translate into a large number of applications.

U.S. immigration to Canada ran at about 23,000 a year during the Vietnam War, but the number has slowly dwindled to about 5,000 a year.

[Black Wolf]

Heh - I wonder if it was just Canada.

[HeX]

Well I sure hope they aren't coming for the weather....

I swear it's 2 months spring, 2 months summer, 2 months fall and 6 months ass-freeze-off winter around here.

[kasperl]

HeX: I'd take that kind of weather above the constant drizzling we have over here.

[Jetmech Jr.]

I'm really not all that surprised about this...

[Rictor]

yeah, I read about this in the paper yesterday. And what they don't realize is that they can't just "move to Canada"; its about a year long wait, plus another 4-5 years to becomes a citizen.

[Rand al Thor]

Yeah cold I can deal with. But moderate cold with pissin rain just sucks the life outta me.

Thats why we drink so much here.

[Turnsky]

i can sense that the resident american population in australia may rise in the next year or so.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Rand al'Thor
Yeah cold I can deal with. But moderate cold with pissin rain just sucks the life outta me.

Thats why we drink so much here.

[color=66ff00]This place rocks.

I'm straining to remember the last time we were subject to uncomfortable extremes of heat or cold, golf ball sized hail, torrential rain, massive snowfall, earthquakes, tornados or invasion from another world; all of which the US seems to fall victim to on a near yearly basis.
[/color]

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by Maeglamor

[color=66ff00]This place rocks.

I'm straining to remember the last time we were subject to uncomfortable extremes of heat or cold, golf ball sized hail, torrential rain, massive snowfall, earthquakes, tornados or invasion from another world; all of which the US seems to fall victim to on a near yearly basis.
[/color]

sounds like tasmania.. 'cept we've had quite a lot of rain for this time of year.

[Zarax]

Nothing beats Sardinia.
8 months of really beautiful weather, no torrential rains, no quakes, no tornadoes, no floods and great people.

[Deepblue]

I hope they realize that doing this will NOT help them (liberals/democrats) regain the senate/house/presidency. This is probably more a way to demonstrate their deppression and not an actual option.

[Thorn]

We don't want any.

[Liberator]

Good riddance.  If they can't play nice now that the election is over, we don't want them.

[Deepblue]

Neither does anyone else...

[Flipside]

While I'm not exactly surprised, I'm sort of with Lib here, but for different reasons. America needs those that will stay and fight for civil rights, not those that will run away from the problem

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Turnsky
i can sense that the resident american population in australia may rise in the next year or so.

As a general rule though, very few of them realize the country extends past sydney (or occasionally melbourne). I doubt most of them even realize we have Tasmania, so I doubt it'll affect you too much. Or me for that matter - I mean, there's a western half of the continent? WTF?

[Mongoose]

Originally posted by Liberator
Good riddance.  If they can't play nice now that the election is over, we don't want them.

[Liberator]

As I knew it would be, the Democrats were strong only in the Urban areas.  City folk tend to have a herd mentality and go with the flow.  It's too bad they don't have a map of how it went by individual voting location.

Notice how Kerry won Michigan by taking Detroit almost quite literally by itself.

[Rictor]

I had this debate on NW.

The electoral college is just an artificial way to give rural voters, tradtionally more conservative, a great voice per individual than the "city slickers".

But that to me seems quite undemocratic. The very concept of democracy is rule by the people. If the majority, regardless of how they are geographically dispersed, favour a more liberal stance, what right does anyone have to deny them that, especially in the name "upholding democracy". Its quite simple: majority rule.

Now aside from that, I personally believe that city dwellers, for a whole host of reasons, are more educated and informed, and thus better able to make decisions on governance, but I would still think the electoral college is corrupt even if it was reversed, and gave progressives an unfair advantage.