Canada is starting to look like a pretty good place to live for thousands of Americans who are unhappy about George W. Bush winning the presidential election.

Canada's official immigration website is receiving a record number of visits since Bush won a second term, and most of the hits are from the U.S.

Within hours of Bush's acceptance speech Wednesday, six times more Americans than usual surfed the site.

There were about 179,000 visitors to the site Wednesday, almost twice the previous one-day record set last year. About 64 per cent of those visitors were Americans.

Skilled workers

A spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration said Thursday that the most-visited pages were the ones that let people check if they would qualify to move to Canada as skilled workers.

But the spokesperson said it's too early to tell whether the record number of inquiries will translate into a large number of applications.

U.S. immigration to Canada ran at about 23,000 a year during the Vietnam War, but the number has slowly dwindled to about 5,000 a year.