How many people would actually leave the country if Trump is elected?

Jim Bennett writes a weekly column offering historical context to current events. Bennett served as Secretary of State of Alabama from 1993 - 2003 and from 2013 - 2015. He was a reporter for the Birmingham Post-Herald from 1961 to 1971. He can be reached at: jimbennettwriter58@gmail.com

In truth, probably not very many. Same goes for Hilary in the White House. It is easy to say you're packing in the heat of the battle but it's mostly all talk.

It is interesting to watch the big talkers though. Most of them say they would move to Canada.  Australia is another possibility but really who does that?

Among those who threaten they'll  move under  a President Trump are Miley Cyrus, Whoopi Goldberg, Samuel L. Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton,  Cher and Jon Stewart.

The threats aren't limited to Trump-haters. The pro-Bernie Sanders Facebook page "If Hillary Clinton wins, I'm moving to Costa Rica" has about 200 likes. Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly said if Sanders wins, he's moving to Ireland. Back in 2012, some supporters of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said they would move to Australia if Barack Obama won re-election.

Text analytics company Luminoso recently did a survey of Twitter users who said they would move if Trump wins. Perhaps in a tongue-in-cheek response to Trump's anti-Mexico rhetoric, 69 percent said Mexico, 17 percent said Canada. Also making the list were England, Australia, France, Jamaica, Ireland, Sweden, Brazil and, curiously, Alaska and Hawaii.

Do these people actually think our 49th and 50th states are foreign countries? For his part, Trump said this week that if he wins and Stewart and others actually leave, he will have done "a great service to our country".

Stewart may have trouble finding a place to go. He told "People," that he "would consider getting in a rocket and going to another planet, because clearly this planet's gone bonkers." He may have company on his interplanetary exit. Cher says she's moving to Jupiter if Trump wins.

Jackson said he would move to South Africa.

"If Donald Trump is the nominee, "Sharpton said, "I'm reserving my ticket to get out of here. Only because he'd probably have me deported anyhow," he told a Center for American Progress event in Washington, DC.

When Barbara Streisand threatened to move to Canada after George Bush won election, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh suggested a fundraising drive to help her relocate. Oddly, Limbaugh promised to leave himself if Obamacare passed but never did.   Since a certain number of Americans leave the country for long or short terms all the time, it could be really difficult to determine who left because of the election.

According to a report by Statistics Canada about 33,000 Canadians move to the US each year. By comparison about 9,000 Americans move to Canada annually. Many of these relocations are geared toward employment opportunities, not politics.

Moving from the United States to Canada is more involved than just packing up your belongings and finding a new domicile. Before you can move to Canada, you must apply for permanent Canadian residency with the office of Citizenship and Immigration Canada and pay a fee. Applicants must fill out employment categories.  They favor people with trades they really need.

Then you'd have to wait for the Citizenship and Immigration Canada office to process your application. The wait time for a resident to apply for Canadian citizenship is getting longer. Under the new rules, a resident will need to have lived there least four of six years, including at least half a year physically in the country for four of those six years. By the way, don't tell any of the one-way ticket buyers that Canada arguably has a more conservative government in Ottawa than the U.S. has in Washington D.C. It will be their surprise.

The New York Times has an interesting list of those partisans who were so upset by one politician or another that they pledged to leave the country if their preferred candidate lost. Susan Sarandon claimed she would move to Canada or Italy if McCain was elected in 2008. She got a reprieve when Barrack Obama won.Pearl Jam's lead singer, Eddie Vedder, pledged to leave the country if George W. Bush won in 2000 - Bush won, Vedder stayed. Actor Stephen Baldwin promised to abandon America if Barack Obama won the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2008 - Baldwin stayed too. Tina Fey promised that she would be "leaving earth" if Sarah Palin became the Vice President of the United States. She didn't have to.

As for all these celebrities threatening to move, we hate to see them go but who really cares? After all, people are breaking down the doors to get into this country, especially from Mexico.

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