It is vanishingly unlikely that an American could successfully claim asylum in Canada. The country has granted it to exactly one US national in each of the past two years. Even then, as a spokesperson for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada explained, it's probable that the asylum seeker in question was a child of people who were seeking asylum because they were persecuted in another country — not someone who was claiming to have been persecuted in the US. Could that change under a Trump administration? Possibly. But as Neda Maghbouleh points out, Canada's commitment to honest-to-goodness refugees makes Canadians a lot less sympathetic to the idea that "life under President Trump" constitutes humanitarian persecution.
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