Trump apocalypse - 13,000 Americans register interest in moving to NZ

The figures were recorded between November 9-16 - exactly a week after Donald Trump shocked the world and was declared President-elect of the United States of America. Photo / AP

Thousands of Americans have registered an interest in moving to New Zealand since Donald Trump was elected US President - and not even a 7.8 magnitude earthquake has put a dent in numbers.

Immigration New Zealand officials said they had received more than 13,000 registrations of interest from US citizens hoping to come here - more than 17 times the number of registrations usually received in a week.

The figures were recorded between November 9-16 - exactly a week after Donald Trump shocked the world and was declared President-elect of the United States of America.

Immigration NZ spokesman Greg Forsythe said: "In the last week, (Wednesday to Wednesday) the Immigration New Zealand website received 112,690 visits from the United States - compared to a usual weekly average of 16,100 visits.

"In the same period, the New Zealand Now website - which contains information about living, working, studying and investing in New Zealand - received 158,333 visits from the United States, compared to a usual weekly average of 10,500 visits."

Forsythe said the organisation typically received about 750 from US nationals interested in working, studying or investing in New Zealand.

"In the past week, 13,401 registrations have been received from American citizens - more than 17 times the number of a typical week's registrations."

Forsythe said it was important to note that registrations of interest were simply that and were different to visa applications.

And it seems even New Zealand's big earthquake has not put people off, with the number of visitors to the sites still high days after the quake struck.

"To put these figures into context, 1288 Americans were approved residence in the year to June, 8876 Americans were approved work visas and 2997 Americans were approved student visas.''

Meanwhile, international news and social media websites have continued to discuss why New Zealand would be the ideal place to move to, post-Trump.

US environmental news site EcoWatch ran an article early this week giving five reasons to consider moving to Aotearoa.

The reasons included the idea that Kiwis respected the land, that politicians here care about climate change - unlike Trump, the article said - and that there was plenty of room for more people.

The article did, however, get the name of the NZ Prime Minister wrong - giving credit to "Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer's'' comments to a media outlet that climate change was his biggest worry about a Trump presidency.

Canada's immigration website crashed after swarms of Americans began visiting it when a Clinton presidency started to look like a no-go.