I am attempting to be one of them. Not "I would vaguely like to leave" but "I have invested money and time into immigration lawyers and professional help." Unfortunately, finding a job offer...
I am attempting to be one of them. Not "I would vaguely like to leave" but "I have invested money and time into immigration lawyers and professional help."
Unfortunately, finding a job offer halfway across the planet is a nontrivial task.
I think that it will be permanent for my family, at least for my wife and I. Any kind of national pride that we had, or thoughts that the US was any kind of force for good, or even "least of the evils" is long gone. We will try somewhere smaller where maybe we can move the needle a bit toward positive values.
Have you reached out/heard of Expatsi before? I have 0 experience, but they're significant enough to be featured in this WSJ article and sound like they're geared towards helping people in your...
Have you reached out/heard of Expatsi before? I have 0 experience, but they're significant enough to be featured in this WSJ article and sound like they're geared towards helping people in your exact situation. Regardless, best of luck!
Archive Link: https://archive.ph/K2LXY It's really interesting to me, to see some actual numbers behind what a lot of us have seen happening. In Canada, the previous Trump administration saw a...
It's really interesting to me, to see some actual numbers behind what a lot of us have seen happening. In Canada, the previous Trump administration saw a spike of Americans apply for permanent residence, then never actually come or only stay until he was out of office. I wonder is this time is more permanent?
Since the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. hasn’t collected comprehensive statistics on the number of citizens leaving. Yet data on residence permits, foreign home purchases, student enrollments and other metrics from more than 50 countries show that Americans are voting with their feet to an unprecedented degree. A millions-strong diaspora is studying, telecommuting and retiring overseas.
The new American dream, for some of its citizens, is to no longer live there.
On a conference call last month hosted by Expatsi, a relocation company, almost 400 Americans signed up to learn how to move to Albania. The former Stalinist state offers a special visa allowing U.S. citizens to live and work there, with no tax on foreign income for a year, no questions asked.
“Previously, the Americans leaving were super-adventurous and well-credentialed,” said Expatsi founder Jen Barnett, a 54-year-old Alabama native who moved to Yucatán, Mexico, in 2024.
“Now they’re ordinary people, like me,” she said as she ticked through growth numbers. In 2024 the company organized three group scouting trips for clients; this year it will be 57, she said: “Our goal is to move one million Americans.”
Some commentators have labeled this wave of American emigrants the “Donald Dash” since numbers have spiked under President Trump’s second term. But the phenomenon has been building for years—fed by the rise of remote work, mounting living costs and an appetite for foreign lifestyles that feel within reach, especially in Europe.
In nearly all of the European Union’s 27 member states, the number of Americans arriving to live and work is at a record and rising. The total living in Portugal has jumped more than 500% since the Covid pandemic and grew by 36% in 2024 alone, official data there showed. In the past 10 years, the number of American residents has nearly doubled in Spain and the Netherlands, and more than doubled in the Czech Republic.
Last year, more Americans moved to Germany than Germans moved to America. The same was true in Ireland, which welcomed 10,000 people from the U.S. in 2025, about double those who came in 2024.
Americans are applying for British citizenship at the highest rate since records began in 2004: some 6,600 in the year to March 2025. They are securing Irish passports at a record pace: 31,825 in 2024, and an estimated 40,000 last year.
Meanwhile, some 50,000 U.S.-born Mexican-Americans moved across the border to work last year, according to a Mexican government survey cited by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The last time more people left the U.S. than moved in, according to Census historical statistics, it was 1935 and the destination of choice was the Soviet Union. More than 100,000 Americans applied to work the tractor plants, steel mills and factories of a communist dictatorship. The newcomers played baseball in Moscow’s Gorky Park—others were later imprisoned in gulags. So many unskilled Americans descended on the U.S.S.R. that by 1938 the Soviets started requiring U.S. visitors to show proof of return travel.
I am attempting to be one of them. Not "I would vaguely like to leave" but "I have invested money and time into immigration lawyers and professional help."
Unfortunately, finding a job offer halfway across the planet is a nontrivial task.
I think that it will be permanent for my family, at least for my wife and I. Any kind of national pride that we had, or thoughts that the US was any kind of force for good, or even "least of the evils" is long gone. We will try somewhere smaller where maybe we can move the needle a bit toward positive values.
Have you reached out/heard of Expatsi before? I have 0 experience, but they're significant enough to be featured in this WSJ article and sound like they're geared towards helping people in your exact situation. Regardless, best of luck!
Archive Link: https://archive.ph/K2LXY
It's really interesting to me, to see some actual numbers behind what a lot of us have seen happening. In Canada, the previous Trump administration saw a spike of Americans apply for permanent residence, then never actually come or only stay until he was out of office. I wonder is this time is more permanent?