It isn’t easy to pack your bags and leave behind a life you’ve known for decades, but Sara Schechter-Schoeman and her husband Bob Jesselson are planning to do just that.

Schechter-Schoeman, a retired lawyer, and Jesselson, a professor of music at the University of South Carolina, are so appalled by the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president that they are prepared to immigrate to Canada from their home in Columbia, S.C.

They’ve been in contact with an immigration lawyer in Montreal who has advised them they are eligible to immigrate to Canada on the basis of family reunification. Schechter-Schoeman’s daughter, who is  married to a Canadian, lives in Toronto.

“We have thought about it. I’ve been drawn to Canada for a long time,” Schechter-Schoeman, 67, said on the phone from Columbia, the state capital.

She’s visited Toronto and enjoyed the diversity of the population and how people seem to get along.

The pull of Canada was magnified by the push of Trump’s election.

“When Trump said he’d run, my husband and I joked that we’re not going to stay in the country if he wins,” she said.

With his election, that joke turned serious. “I don’t feel safe in my country anymore,” she said.

Schechter-Schoeman can’t understand how Trump could win, and what that means for the country, even after the candidate made statements she felt were xenophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-black and anti-Semitic.

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Jesselson, in particular, has experienced “visceral fear,” she said.

“My husband’s mother escaped Nazi Germany in 1939. The grandparents of my late husband – also the child of German-Jewish refugees – were murdered in Auschwitz. A week before Trump’s election, a neo-Nazi poster was put up on the lamp post next door to us. We live in an upper middle class neighbourhood near the university. I have lived in South Carolina for 40 years and never seen anything like this.

“My husband thinks this is Germany 1938. Fear is in the bones. It is more frightening each day as Trump announces further picks for his cabinet and adviser positions,” she stated.

According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, in 2013 a little more than 9,414 Americans immigrated to Canada, far behind the roughly 30,000 each from the three big sources of new Canadians – China, India and the Philippines.

U.S. immigration peaked in the early 1970s at more than 25,000, as young Americans fled the draft. The numbers dropped precipitously with the end of the Vietnam War and reached a bottom of around 5,000 in the period from 1998 to 2002. It began rising again during the administration of president George W. Bush, fell after the election of Barack Obama, and rose slightly again in 2011.

During the recent presidential campaign, a number of celebrities, including Lena Dunham, Miley Cyrus, Chelsea Handler and Bryan Cranston, threatened to leave the United States if Trump was elected. That prompted some wags to joke that Canada would build a wall to keep them out, as Trump had promised to do along the Mexican border.

On election night, Canada’s immigration website crashed as Trump’s victory became apparent.

Joanna Sasson Morrison, manager of community development direct services for JIAS Toronto, acknowledged, “We’ve had a few phone calls, but I think it’s too early to make a big deal out of this.”

“We need to allow the dust to settle and see what trends emerge. Is this people with a gut reaction post-election? Will they carry through?”

Fewer than 10 calls were fielded by JIAS intake workers in the first few days after the vote, mostly from American Jews inquiring about a move to Canada, and a couple were from Canadians calling on behalf of American relatives, she said.

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JIAS is able to provide guidance to potential immigrants, but Morrison cautions that uprooting oneself should not be a snap decision. Even if someone is eligible, “the immigration procedures into Canada are quite rigorous.”

“It can take years for an immigration process from start to finish.”

Schechter-Schoeman is aware of that. But she’s willing to wait.

She protested the Vietnam War and she and her husband have been active in their community.

But, she said, “I don’t want to stay and fight anymore. I’d rather go to a place that’s good.”