A new research tool that tracks cell phone activity has found a 42% drop in visitors from Canada to big metropolitan areas in the US that is much higher than official border-crossing data, suggesting Canadians during the second Trump administration are avoiding US cities in particular.

Researchers from the University of Toronto said the tool showed a “year-over-year median decline of approximately 42% in Canadian visits to US metropolitan areas – significantly higher than official border-crossing data, which showed a roughly 25% decline”.

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[–] HeroicBillyBishop@lemmy.ca 26 points 4 months ago (1 children)

"Come see America....and maybe El Salvador!"

[–] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It’s a vacation within a vacation.

[–] HeroicBillyBishop@lemmy.ca 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

…and a great weight loss option, as food my be ‘limited’

[–] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 8 points 4 months ago

Detox resort.

[–] FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's still not enough. Why is anybody still going there?

[–] Worstdriver@lemmy.world -4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I have friends in the US. I visit them, not their country.

[–] FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

How do you visit them without visiting their country? If ICE comes for you, will saying "I'm not in the country, I'm just visiting friends" save you?

[–] Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I'm surprised it's that low. Who are those people who just don't care?

[–] Witchfire@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I know people in the queer community who constantly visit the states for whatever reason. It's always fucking Florida too.

I get traveling in the winter but why fucking Florida?

[–] puppinstuff@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

In my social circles the only people traveling are doing it to see family split across the border. The vacations are now in Mexico and the Dominican but I know people that have gone to weddings and funerals there.

They don’t feel safe but they still feel obligated to go. I don’t condone it but I get it.

[–] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 months ago

Who are those people who just don't care?

I mean, the managers at my company are often traveling back and forth from our CAN-US shop an offices. Some people simply don’t have a choice and don’t believe they’ll run into issues.

I got asked to go train folks in the US shop right after ICE started cracking down, I refused and told HR if that’s a requirement of my new position I’d rather go back to what I was doing previously.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Methodology

The data comes from geolocation based trips tracking Canadian devices traveling to U.S. metro areas based on Cuebiq's stops table. A "Canadian device" is defined as a unique device per day in the stops table with the country code set as "Canada" and the device type as "Home." Home devices are classified based on the duration and timing of the stops from an observation of the past 84 days, and each device is assigned a unique anonymized identifier. These Canadian devices have been recorded between April 1, 2024 - March 31, 2026 to measure daily trip occurrences.

Interesting data but rather disconcerting that Canadians' and Americans' cellular devices are being tracked by ad agencies like this.

[–] girlfreddy@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 months ago

I thought the same when I first read that. Makes our puny attempts at privacy pretty much irrelevant.

[–] NatakuNox@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

[–] Bebopalouie@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 months ago

Exactly, until it is 0 I will not be happy.