Lawyer says his office 'flooded' with Americans escaping to Canada

Passengers wait in a TSA security checkpoint queue that stretches through Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) in Baltimore, Maryland., U.S., March 29, 2026. REUTERS/Aaron Schwartz

President Donald Trump’s policies are so unpopular, many Americans are considering fleeing to their northern neighbor — and it appears a new Canadian policy intended to help them is so popular, one lawyer’s office is inundated with calls.

“Nicholas Berning, an immigration attorney at Boundary Bay Law in Bellingham, Washington, said his practice is ‘pretty much flooded with this,’” reported The Associated Press' Sarah Raza on Thursday. Berning was referring to Americans who believe that, because Canada will now extend citizenship to anyone who can prove an ancestor was born in their borders, they will have a better future there than under Trump’s America.

“We’ve kind of shifted a lot of other work away in order to push these cases through,” Berning told Raza. He was not alone among Americans eager to abandon the United States for a less right-wing country.

“I put in my best effort for 30 years,” Michelle Cunha, of Bedford, Massachusetts, told Raza. “I have done everything that I possibly can to make the United States what it promises the world to be, a place of freedom, a place of equality. But clearly we’re not there and we’re not going to get there anytime soon.”

Zack Loud of Farmington, Minnesota, similarly told Reza that he and his spouse were already considering leaving America for Canada and were surprised that Canada is working to accommodate people like them.

“My wife and I were already talking about potentially looking at jobs outside the country, but citizenship pushed Canada way up on our list,” Loud told Reza.

“Millions more Americans might qualify for dual Canadian citizenship under a recent change to Canada's requirements that has led to a surge in applications from its southern neighbor,” Reza reported. “All they have to do is prove they have a Canadian ancestor, someone born in Canada, of any kind — ‘a grandparent, great-grandparent or even more distant ancestor.’”

Canada, like many other countries, is ruled by someone with a poor relationship with the American president: Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Fen Hampson, professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, said Canadians are generally a “welcoming people," but sometimes "start looking askance" with people who had no interest in Canada and who’ve never been to Canada. Hampson added that some Canadians also worry that a surge of interest from Americans could delay efforts by refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing vulnerable situations and peril.

“Canadians don’t like queue jumpers,” Hampson said.

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