Requiem For A Dream Of Coming To America

It's not me, it's you.

Image: Deviant Art

When Rebecca gave me the green light to write weekly dispatches from America’s northern neighbor last year, I introduced myself as “your aspiring new Canadian boyfriend” to riff on the trope of fictional romantic partners you wouldn’t know because they live in Canada. Plus of course I wanted all of y’all to like me.

I didn’t expect a day would come where I might be fielding marriage proposals from Wonkette readers keen to acquire citizenship.

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My ex-wife and I are too lazy and amicable to have bothered with finalizing divorce paperwork after things went sideways so it might take some time before I’m free to walk down an aisle again. Manic pixie dream girls are preferred but it seems kinda selfish to at least not be open to a sexless gay marriage if it helps save someone’s life. I’ve written newspaper advertorials and impersonated tech bro CEOs as a ghostwriter so it’s not like I’m a stranger to prostituting myself.

I’m only half-kidding about this but I won’t be surprised if a maple-scented cottage industry pops up similar to Russia’s mail-order brides but without the stigma or borscht. Google Trends say searches for “Move to Canada” nearly broke the internet last week, particularly early Wednesday morning when people woke to the news a majority of their compatriots had voted for what George Orwell called “a boot stamping on a human face forever.”

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You will not be surprised to hear the queries were most common in non-Dumbfuckistan states Kamala Harris won, such as Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Oregon. (Hawaii not so much, but they wouldn’t do well in the cold anyway.) Others that reached “breakout” status, which Google defines as a search increase of more than 5,000 percent, include:

• Cost to move to Canada from U.S.

• Can I move to Canada if Trump wins

• How to move to Ireland from U.S.

• Easiest country to move to from U.S.A.

• Jobs in Canada for Americans

I can see the appeal of Ireland since they famously banished all the snakes from the island instead of letting them form a political movement. Also they speak adorable English. But simply fleeing to Canada isn’t as easy as you might think. Comedian Marc Maron, who saw the bloody writing on the wall years ago, is currently applying for residency and has talked about it on his podcast. One thing he found is that being a wealthy celebrity with powerful connections doesn’t mean you get to skip to the front of the line, and nor should it.

I’ve always envied the way members of the European Union can simply work in each other’s countries hassle-free, and I used to wish — at least in the pre-MAGA days of yore — that we had a similar working arrangement like the Aussies and Kiwis do. My first grownup job was actually in the US where I worked as a whitewater guide on the Penobscot River in northern Maine during my university years.

The first two summers were under the table but my boss chose to sponsor a visa application for the final two, and one of the hoops required to jump through was convincing a bureaucrat that there weren’t available American workers who could do it instead. Being a job involving a very particular set of skills located in the middle of nowhere, it wasn’t a tough argument to make, but the process was far from automatic.

I’ve since regretted not using this as a stepping stone to a Green Card or maybe even dual citizenship. If only to use it just to vote against Republicans.

Sad to say but there’s a good chance I may never visit the United States ever again. I don’t have a criminal record but as a journalist I am very much now an alleged “enemy of the people.” I just googled my byline plus the soon-to-be-self-pardoning convicted felon as an experiment, and the top results were tweets linking to unfavorable assessments of the man on this here mommyblog as well as an old story for VICE about the grand opening of a Trump Tower in Vancouver. (Yes, it’s since gone out of business because duh.) I’m a tall, strapping white dude but even the dimmest border official would easily see whose side of the culture war I’m on without much digging.

It’s worth reminding the same anti-immigrant bullshit is boiling up north as well. Last month, the Trudeau government announced it was slashing the number of new permanent residents for the next three years, down from the targeted 500,000 a year to 395,000 next year, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027. The reason the PM gave is they simply screwed up juggling the numbers post-COVID:

In the tumultuous times as we emerged from the pandemic, between addressing labor needs and maintaining population growth, we didn't get the balance quite right. With the plan we're announcing today, along with previously announced measures, we're making our immigration system work better.

He even said it with a straight face. More likely he’s watched his rival Pierre Poilievre riding brown-skinned boogeymen at the border to a commanding lead in the polls and realized welcoming legions of new Canadians — which historically has kind of been the country’s main jam — isn’t going over well at a time when most people can’t afford igloos and are blaming him specifically.

There’s a sense that a silver lining for Canada might be that voters will back away from the Conservatives if the current HOLY SHIT THE MURICANS DID WHAA?! revulsion sticks. A prime minister Poilievre seemed almost a fait accompli with Team Trudeau tanking in the polls. That he was inevitable, like Thanos. Although it’s fair to wonder how much Justin Trudeau would even still want the job if he’ll have to deal with that fucking monster in the Oval Office all over again.

One of the sadder notes for me personally in an evening full of them was the news Wayne Gretzky attended an election night party at Mar-a-Lago. I guess he has more in common with Vladimir Putin’s good pal Alex Ovechkin than just being really, really good at hockey. The Great One’s jersey number was 99 but he’s a one percenter at heart, and we should really stop calling him “the Great One.”

No doubt a certain president-elect would happily take the nickname for himself.

“Putting on the tinfoil” usually means something else in hockey. (Photo: Paulina Gretzky/Instagram, Larry Glick/Instagram)

[VICE / CTV]