A new report finds that a growing number of Americans, particularly Californians, are considering moving abroad because they are “fed up” with America’s political divisions.
The Los Angeles Times spoke with global migration experts who have documented an increase in the number of Americans seeking to leave the country since 2020, many of whom are California residents.
The number of applications this election year has already exceeded last year, global firm Henley & Partners said. The consulting firm helps clients obtain residency and citizenship in other countries and said about 80% of their U.S. clients want to leave the country due to political issues.
“They want the opportunity to escape,” Basil Mohr Elzeki, who runs Henley & Partners’ North American operations, told the LA Times. “Now with the election, people have opinions on both sides and they are worried.”
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Voters arrive to cast their ballots in the 2024 United States presidential election on Election Day at the Detroit Police Department, Twelfth Precinct in Detroit, Michigan, United States, November 5, 2024. (Reuters/Emily Elconin)
Jen Barnett, founder of Expatsi, another company that helps U.S. citizens looking to move abroad, said her website traffic increased 900% after the first presidential debate between President Biden and the former President Trump. She said traffic increased further in the final weeks of the 2024 race.
Barnett and her husband moved to Mexico earlier this year after spending years looking for a place to live outside the United States after Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016.
“The very fact that he could be named among me meant that something was irreparably broken, and it was not something we could get back,” she told the Times.
Mykel Dicus, 54, of Hayward, California, said in the report that he plans to move to Spain in the next three years because he feels safer there and is afraid of another Trump presidency.
“If a regime like MAGA were to win this election, I would be very afraid,” Dicus said. “I just feel like it’s time to enjoy a life free from American worries.”
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Former President Donald Trump rallied in Raleigh, North Carolina, before Vice President Kamala Harris addressed supporters in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (Reuters/Brian Snyder/Kevin Mohatt)
According to the report’s experts, it’s not just liberals who are looking to flee the country.
“Anecdotally, I’ve heard more and more people talking about not only the Trump administration, but also the divisions in the country,” Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, a migration expert at the University of Texas, told the Times. Kent in Brussels.
Another migration expert, Marco Permunian, founder of Italian Citizenship Assistance, said his company saw an increase in the number of Americans seeking to live abroad after the 2016 election, but that the number continued to grow under the Biden administration.
“We came to the conclusion that there is a feeling of fear in general, and that it affects people on both sides of the political spectrum,” Permunian told the newspaper.
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