Born and raised in the South, Mahlena-Rae Johnson moved to Los Angeles after graduating from high school. She spent decades in the city working as a writer, eventually finding a partner and a community of people who made California feel like home.

Johnson, a 42-year-old Black woman, said she felt a turning point when Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. She said she felt it laid bare profound political and ideological divisions within the nation, which resulted in a growing intolerance toward non-cisgendered Americans.

In 2018, she and her partner relocated to Canada, seeking what they perceived to be a more politically progressive and secure environment to raise their children.

"I watched videos of people who moved to Canada, and one man who had moved years ago said that he liked living in a place where he knew his country wasn't constantly at war," Johnson told Business Insider. "It is overall a place where I feel safer with my family."

Data shows that Google searches for "moving to Canada" tend to spike after polarizing events, including the 2016 presidential election, the particularly contentious debate between Trump and Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election, and the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

"Usually when there's an election cycle, or when people don't like who is elected, Americans in particular want to move to Canada," VisaPlace CEO Michael Niren, an immigration lawyer with more than 25 years of experience in Canadian migration, told BI.

A smaller number of Americans actually follow through on their internet dreams and make the move. According to immigration data from the Canadian government, 79,175 Americans applied to be permanent residents in Canada from the first quarter of 2015 to the third quarter of 2023. The data, which does not include temporary, study, or work visas, is a rough barometer of American movers to Canada.

Two Americans who moved to Canada told BI they did so to escape polarized and divisive politics, escape inadequate healthcare, and feel safer in their communities. While they said their overall quality of life had improved, they found the grass wasn't greener in every arena: There can be long waitlists for medical care, and it's very expensive to buy a home.

Johnson, who primarily wanted to escape American politics, said she discovered some advantages of Canada's schooling system once her two children enrolled.

In LA, she said, "many of the schools are in trailers instead of actual buildings," but in Canada, "children can go to school and not worry about having a place that is safe or not being in an actual building."

Johnson said she and her family had also enjoyed Canada's universal, publicly funded healthcare system, under which citizens and permanent residents get most medically necessary care and medications for free or at a very low cost.

She added that there were some frustrations, including that lengthy waiting periods for medical care had gotten longer. "During the pandemic, doctors couldn't see patients as regularly and non-emergency procedures were postponed, so there's a backlog," she said.

Niren, who has lived in both the US and Canada, voiced similar concerns. He said his own mother, who needs a hip replacement, had been on a waitlist for 18 months.

"There are people who have to fly to other countries — including the United States — to get cancer treatment because it takes too long," he said. "In the US, you can get a specialist appointment in two days."

Niren also said Canadians paid elevated taxes to support such a comprehensive healthcare system.

"People call it free healthcare — it's not free," he said. "It's very expensive because you're paying through the taxes."

Chris Ouellet, 40, left Portland, Oregon, for Victoria, British Columbia, in 2020. It wasn't his first-choice destination, he said, but he ended up finding the peace and safety he was looking for.

He and his partner had planned to move to Wellington, New Zealand, but were unable to because of pandemic border lockdowns. A lot of the characteristics Ouellet was looking for in New Zealand, he said, he found in British Columbia.

"We love the Pacific Northwest, and Canada is not far up the road," Ouellet told BI. "It's very similar weather, and they have a lot of the things that we wanted and what we were looking for in New Zealand, which was a lower cost of education, socialized healthcare, and politics that weren't so incredibly polarizing."

Ouellet, who works for the provincial government at the Ministry of Health in British Columbia, spoke glowingly of Portland but did point out the "pretty bad" violence and opioid crises he witnessed in the US overall. Before Portland, he and his partner lived in Chicago. The violence they would read about or see on their daily commutes prompted them to move west and eventually out of the country altogether, he said.

He hasn't had the same worries in Canada.

"In British Columbia, the regulations for being able to own a gun are extremely tight," he said. "When you're out in public, and you hear a noise, no one runs, no one checks over their shoulder, no one thinks that it could possibly be gun violence."

He added that there was still an opioid crisis in British Columbia, but it wasn't as striking as it is in Portland. Ouellet said that in the three years he'd lived in British Columbia, he'd seen one syringe on the ground, compared with Portland, where he saw dozens a day.

Ouellet said he had no regrets about moving to British Columbia, but Canada's housing crisis sidelined his dreams of homeownership.

"The house that we had in Portland was three bedrooms, 2 ½ baths. It was about 1,800 square feet, and we bought it for $265,000. You can't find a place for that price here," he said. "Most condos are around $500,000 to $900,000. Single-family homes are almost a million."

As Niren said, "Canada is one of the greatest countries in the world, but it's no utopia."

Are you an American who moved to Canada? We want to hear from you. Reach out to the reporters, Alcynna Lloyd at alloyd.com and Jordan Pandy at jpandy.com, with your story.