Data show more Americans aren’t heading to Canada — it’s the other way around
When Donald Trump was first elected U.S. president in 2016, there was a healthy dose of hyperbolic headlines about Americans fleeing to Canada in response, headlines that quickly re-surfaced after his re-election in 2024.
And while it’s true asylum claims from U.S. citizens have spiked in the first full year of both his terms and the ascension of Bill C-3 has opened the citizenship door to untold thousands of Americans with Canadian ancestral roots, new data from the Association for Canadian Studies show fewer U.S. citizens are emigrating north in recent years.
“There is an important gap between the purported high consideration of such an exit and its actual reality,” wrote ASC president Jack Jedwab.
In the first three quarters of 2025 (Jan.-Sept.), Canada admitted 20 per cent fewer Americans as permanent residents than the same time in 2024 and the lowest amount since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
That’s in line with a similar decrease in overall admissions, but figures indicate a precipitous decline early in 2026, with only 295 received that January compared to 805 in 2025. If that pace holds through the rest of the year, Canada will have received just over 3,500 applications, well shy of the nearly 9,100 fielded in 2025.
Jedwab also found that the number of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) from south of the border was down 10 per cent in the first nine months of 2025 versus the same time in 2024. As Canada tries to get its program under control, the overall number of workers fell by about 20 per cent year-over-year over that stretch, but the number of Americans using it has remained largely unchanged since 2022.
It’s not that Americans aren’t leaving the U.S., however.
Jedwab cited a Wall Street Journal report that found the nation experienced a period of negative net migration in 2025 — when more Americans left than arrived — for the first time since 1935, near the height of the Great Depression.
Jedwab said the Trump administration maintained it was a byproduct of increased deportations and tighter visa restrictions, “but the reality is America’s own citizens are leaving in record numbers, replanting themselves and their families in lands they find more affordable.”
Almost 80 per cent of more than 2,000 counties that experienced population growth in 2023 and 2024 experienced a slowing or reversal last year.
Both shifts, he said, were largely influenced by lower overall net international migration — the net total of migrants during a period, calculated as the number of immigrants minus the number of emigrants (people who leave).
The Journal reported that countries like Portugal, Ireland, Thailand and Bali are becoming popular destinations due to the lower costs of living and perceived better quality of life.
Meanwhile, Jedwab said Canada is experiencing its own “exodus” of both citizens and permanent residents emigrating around the world, not just to the U.S., though it remains the top destination.
Citing Statistics Canada data, he noted roughly 120,000 left Canada in 2025, three per cent more than in 2024 and the fourth straight year the figure has climbed. More than half (53.9 per cent) were prime-aged workers between 25 and 49, “often mid-career professionals in peak-earning years,” many of whom are highly-skilled immigrants like doctors, engineers and scientists who are leaving at twice the rate of their lower-skilled peers.
Seniors (55 and older) account for almost one in seven permanent departures, “with 16,609 leaving in 2025 — an 80.5 per cent increase compared to a decade ago.”
‘Economic motivation’ to resettle
As part of the data study, Jedwab sought to compare the socio-economic profiles of Canadian nationals living in the U.S. and Canadian citizens born in the U.S.
Using Canada’s 2021 national census to understand the latter and the 2021 American Community Survey for insight into the former, Jedwab found that “rather than politics or ideology, economic motivation is the main driver in moves across the border by Americans and Canadians respectively.”
“Even with controls in place, the data point to vast differences in education and income,” he noted.
For instance, U.S. citizens originally from Canada are more likely to earn incomes over CAD$100,000 and those workers aged 25-54 were far more likely to earn over that amount than their American-born population counterparts in Canada. In 2021, almost 36 per cent of the former were earning more than $100,000, more than double the U.S. national average (16.2 per cent).
In terms of education, both cohorts have more university degrees or higher than the overall population, but Americans hailing from Canada are slightly more educated.
The Canadian-born Americans are also more likely to be homeowners.
Jedwab also used the most recent American Community Survey from 2024 to get a better understanding of current Canadian-born Americans, finding that more than one in three are 65 and older (34.4 per cent), they are predominantly Anglophones and, despite almost half being well-educated (48.1 per cent), many of those who arrived between 2019 and 2024 earned less than $80,000 annually (64 per cent).
Over that same time, Florida (21.2 per cent) eclipsed California (13 per cent) as the top choice for Canadians relocating to the U.S.
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