About 2,000 more Americans than normal have moved to Canada since Trump’s election

The first year and a half or so of Donald Trump’s presidency has seen a modest uptick in Americans moving to Canada, federal immigration statistics show.

Over 2017 and the first quarter of 2018, 1,055 more Americans were granted permanent residency than the average number during the Obama administration. Student visas granted to U.S. citizens increased by 1.012 in 2017, compared to the average number over the eight years before that.

There could be factors other than politics at work: English fluency is worth more points than it used to be, says Toronto immigration lawyer Guidy Mamann, which tends to favour Americans.

“The way we’re doing business now is skewing in favour of English-speaking countries, because language is of greater importance than it has been in the past, so countries like the United States should expect to see some uptick in their numbers, at the expense of countries that don’t have native English speakers.”

The change took effect around the time Trump was elected.