Emigration from the USA exceeded immigration for the first time. Most are leaving for Europe. Why and where?

Americans are increasingly preferring countries with lower salaries but a cheaper cost of living and, most importantly, safe and comfortable lifestyles. In the photo by Nasha Niva: strawberries in the Town Hall Square in Vilnius

Last year, the US faced a situation not seen since the Great Depression: more people left the country than arrived. According to calculations by the Brookings Institute, in 2025 the US experienced a "negative migration balance" with a loss of about 150,000 people, and this outflow is likely to increase in 2026. The Wall Street Journal investigated the reasons for the new trend.

As the publication notes, the last time a similar situation was recorded was in 1935. Today, the direction of emigration is to countries in Europe and Latin America.

Who is leaving and where to?

In total, according to various estimates, between 4 and 9 million US citizens live abroad.

A real boom is observed in Europe. In Portugal, the number of Americans has jumped by more than 500% since the start of the pandemic and grew by 36% in 2024 alone. In Spain and the Netherlands, the number of US residents has doubled in the last 10 years, and in the Czech Republic, it has more than doubled.

Last year, more Americans moved to Germany than Germans to America. Ireland accepted 10,000 people from the US in 2025 (twice as many as the year before), and the number of applications for an Irish passport reached a record 40,000.

Over 325,000 Americans reside in the United Kingdom. The number of citizenship applications reached a maximum since records began in 2004.

A symbolic milestone has been passed in Norway – there are now more people born in the US living there than people born in Norway living in the US.

Besides Europe, popular destinations remain Mexico (where about 1.6 million American citizens lived in 2022) and Canada (over 250,000).

Reasons for emigration from the USA

In the author's opinion, the motivation of emigrants is a combination of economic reasons and disillusionment with the American way of life.

The main factor today is the ability to earn high American salaries while working remotely, but living in countries with a lower cost of living, a comfortable lifestyle, affordable healthcare, quality education, and a low crime rate.

Indeed, safety plays a significant role. Some parents, as the WSJ gives an example, move so that their children do not become victims of school shootings, which occur regularly in America. In European countries, as in Belarus, free possession of weapons is prohibited, and incidents involving firearms are minimal, and the number of murders is many times lower than in the US.

Political turbulence and the re-election of Trump, which some call the cause of the Donald Dash, may also, to some extent, influence the situation. However, as the publication emphasizes,

the trend did not start now, but earlier – with the development of remote work and the rising cost of living.

Thus, the number of requests to renounce US citizenship jumped by 48% back in 2024.

A Gallup poll showed that the proportion of those who would like to emigrate from the US grew from 10% in 2008 to 20% last year. And among women aged 15-44, the childbearing age, this figure reaches 40%.

The trend also affects youth. More than 100,000 American students study abroad because it is significantly cheaper. In the UK, the number of Americans obtaining a degree grew by 14% last year alone. At the same time, the flow of foreign students to the US decreased by 17% last year.

As the WSJ ironically notes,

the new "American dream" for many Americans is to leave America.

This undermines the long-held belief in "American exceptionalism," as more and more people are concluding that the quality of life abroad has become better than in the US.

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