Let’s Move to Canada?

By: Fatimah Siddiqah

Teresa opened up the Canadian immigration website, and clicked on the registration button. She started filling up page after page, and was both annoyed and exhausted by the time she got to the submit button. When she clicked on the submit button, the page went blank, and at the top written in black bold letters was, SERVER CRASHED PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER. “Oh my god! You’re telling me I just wasted an hour filling up papers for this? This is so not fair!”, yelled Teresa.

The results of the 2016 election have put people into a panic. The Canadian immigration website has crashed many times ever since Trump has been elected president of the United States. People are protesting all over the country, but more importantly people are packing up their bags and getting ready to hop on to the next plane going to Canada, quite literally. People, more specifically Muslims, haven’t stopped to think, is it the right time to move to Canada now or later?

You may be surprised to find that the huge masses of people moving to Canada is in fact not a new course of action. According to Danielle Kurtzleben, a journalist for NPR, after Bush was elected president in 2000 people had the same reaction. People thought of Bush the same way people think of Trump today. Graphs have shown that after the 2000 election, the number of people moving to Canada yearly, had increased by 60,000 people in the mere amount of five years. Experts estimate that the number of people moving to Canada this time will be around triple the number since 2000.

While most people agree that immigrating to Canada is due to political reasons, some people disagree thinking it’s due to economical reasons. The economy of the United states has been falling for quite a long time now. Surveys and graphs show that the people moving to Canada due to political reasons are twice the number of those moving to Canada for economical reasons. The election has also resulted in many people giving up their citizenship. The number of people doing so has increased by triple the amount in two years.

Canada’s intake of immigrants per year is the highest per capita in the world. Though Canadian government isn’t affected much, citizens feel otherwise. The intake of immigrants has made it harder for Canadian citizens, a minimum of 1.5 billion people, to find jobs. Many feel that they should have the priority to get jobs in their own country. Housing has also become a major problem in which people cannot find decent homes for low prices. House prices in Metro Vancouver are the second highest in the world. Finally, the urban areas of Canada are excessively populated, making the environment a very unhealthy place.

Muslims should notice that the Prophet (S) and his companions did not move right away when the torture began. They lived with the non-Muslims, who tortured them ruthlessly, for more than a year before migrating to Abyssinia. Still many of the early believers opted to stay in Makkah with the Prophet (S). “The non believers in Makkah were a lot more cruel to Muslims than Donald Trump will ever be”, says a person who would like to remain anonymous. The early Muslims of Makkah endured much pain before moving to other cities.

In a recent survey conducted by this reporter, over two-thirds of the people would rather move to Canada than stay in the USA. Many are scared of what Trump will do, while others just don’t want to be present when the downfall of the USA is final. While most people want to move to Canada, there are a few who would like to stay. Haniyah Bilal, an 8th grader at ISSD says,”I believe we should not “chicken out” at a time like this. I believe we should stay and show that we Muslims are strong.” The sole purpose of a Muslim living in a non-Muslim country is to spread da’wah and represent Islam. So if all the Muslims leave the country, then who will be here to represent Islam?

Now the big question still remains, is it correct to move to Canada right at this moment? Morally speaking people should be considerate of the Canadian citizens. They feel that their rights as citizens have been violated, and that there is no honor in being a citizen of Canada anymore. In a religious manner, didn’t the Prophet (S) and early believers endure much more pain before fleeing to other cities? Both Muslims and non-Muslims should stand up for their rights, and protest for what they believe in. When people are fleeing to Canada or other places, they are giving Trump strength and power. Trump will easily cheat through this game, if he doesn’t have any opponents to play against.