American Montrealers reflect on election, immigration
Robert Vincent is not a political refugee.
Vincent and his wife moved from Massachusetts to Quebec in 2002 after she was hired as a professor at McGill University. The country’s bruising politics had nothing to do with the decision.
But throughout this year’s presidential campaign — one that’s been marked by a level of acrimony rarely seen in modern American politics — Vincent has been hearing a familiar refrain from his friends down south.
“We always hear it from friends. I get notes from my sister and friends who are fantasizing about getting out of the country,” said Vincent, now a dual citizen. “Of course, it’s mostly a joke. But the rise of (Donald) Trump has a lot of people worried.
“If someone’s ready to vote for the Republican party it’s almost worthless to engage in a debate. It’s like trying to talk somebody out of being Catholic.”
Vincent’s friends aren’t the only ones musing about uprooting themselves. Last March, as it became increasingly clear that Trump would capture the Republican nomination, the number of Americans typing “How do I move to Canada?” into Google spiked by 350 per cent.
Similar search-engine trends were observed in 2004, after George W. Bush was re-elected president, and again following President Barack Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012. But there’s no evidence that suggests a postelection exodus into the Great White North.
Data from Statistics Canada shows that immigration trends from the U.S. have been steady for the past decade — about 8,500 Americans come north as permanent residents every year with no noticeable uptick during or after election years.
Though the seemingly endless campaign came to an end Tuesday, many worry some of the antiimmigrant, racially charged and aggressive rhetoric of the presidential race will linger for years to come.
Justin Fletcher says his countrymen asked if they could move into his Plateau-Mont-Royal apartment if Trump won the election.
“It’s a studio apartment, so I tell them it’s not going to happen,” said Fletcher, a New Yorker who applied for permanent residency in 2015. “I think most people think that Hillary will win, but even the thought that Trump could win is terrifying for a lot of people. So I hear the joke a lot.”
Like any other immigrants, the Americans who chose to settle in Quebec face a set of administrative and cultural hurdles. That may explain why the province welcomed just 828 American immigrants in 2015 — according to the Institut de la statistique du Québec.
“Probably the biggest challenge has been linguistic,” said Vincent, a software developer and CEGEP professor. “It was easy for us to skate by on English, as long as we didn’t have kids. But then when we had children and had to send them to French school. Now, all of a sudden we find ourselves struggling to get our French better, to help our kids with their homework, to get them to conjugate the, you know, ‘future simple’ verb tense. Our French is not very good.”
There were other adjustments: retrofitting the family car so it conforms to Quebec standards, moving all their worldly possessions over the border and, of course, the mountain of paperwork that comes with applying for residency.
Fletcher applied in 2015 after accepting a job at McGill’s department of teaching and learning. As a McGill alumnus, he was eligible for the Programme de l’expérience québécoise, which offers a path to citizenship for Quebec university graduates.
The 24-year-old says that while it has taken some work to perfect his French, living in Canada agrees with him.
“I definitely feel safer here in Montreal. I am gay and, in the United States right now, you’re seeing a lot of states adopt religious freedom laws that attack the LGBT community,” Fletcher said. “It’s not like that here. It’s not really up for debate here. It’s not perfect here, but I feel safer.
“There’s more of a group mentality here, too. Like it feels as though people are pulling together. It’s not like, ‘I have to send my kid to this preschool so that they can get into Harvard when they grow up.’ ”
When Vincent tries to describe the differences between Quebec and Massachusetts to his former compatriots, he says he inevitably begins by talking about our long winters.
“Once I stop talking about the weather, I’d probably talk about the politics,” Vincent said. “That certainly is strikingly different. I’m sure there are people who will vote Liberal no matter what, but it seems like there’s more fluidity in party identification because people pay attention to the issues. In the states, party affiliation is hardened. There’s not much wiggle room.
“Of course, there are things about home you miss, but we consider ourselves happy Canadians now.”