As reported by a story in Yahoo News, an Association for Canadian Studies study found that the ratio of U.S. bound Canadians to Canada-bound Americans has decreased from 4-1 to 2-1 over the span of a decade:
Last year, a total of 20,138 people traded their maple leaves for stars and stripes – a drop from the peak of 29,138 in 2005.
Meantime, 11,216 people left Uncle Sam for Queen Elizabeth in 2008, more than double the 5,828 who came to Canada in 2000.
There seems to be an inconsistency between the data provided by this study and Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC)’s own data, which shows only 8,219 Americans becoming Canadian permanent residents in 2008, which could be due to a different methodology used in this study.
CIC has been seeking to attract more U.S. based workers to Canada recently. Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney visited Silicon Valley in April to promote Canada to Americans and foreign nationals working in the U.S. with an H-1B visa.