Americans Are Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:05)
Our colleagues, Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson, both live in Europe, and they report a lot of stories together, usually about things like high-stakes hostage swaps or war in the Middle East. Here's Joe.

**Joe Parkinson** (0:18)
Our job is to travel around, normally finding the big stories that are happening across the world that Americans are interested in. Sometimes the most appealing stories you almost miss because they're hiding in plain sight.

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:34)
In their day-to-day lives, Joe and Drew noticed something. They were meeting a lot of Americans and not just tourists.
Here's Drew.

**Drew Hinshaw** (0:44)
We met people who are buying and selling real estate in Texas out of Barcelona. We met someone who runs a trailer park in Florida out of Madrid.
People running investment firms out of Berlin.

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:57)
So they started wondering, was this just a coincidence, or were more Americans uprooting their lives to move abroad?
Joe and Drew started reporting. They reached out to the governments of more than 40 countries, from Albania to Vietnam. And ultimately, they found that the answer was yes.

**Drew Hinshaw** (1:17)
America has always been a country of immigration, a land that people moved to.
But last year for the first time since the 1930s, more people left than moved in. And there's this really interesting undercurrent, which is that the number of Americans who are leaving the US to go live in foreign lands and work and retire and go to school there is rising. And it is rising really fast.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:42)
And even more Americans want to leave. In 2008, Gallup found that one in 10 Americans wanted to move out of the US.
Last year, it was one in five.

**Drew Hinshaw** (1:53)
It poses elemental questions for America, which has always prided itself as a destination. But in some ways, it's also a collapse of faith because there's an affordability crisis. People are trying to avoid health care costs and housing costs. And also, I think people are just hungry for something different, some different way of living.

**Joe Parkinson** (2:12)
This story is about, in a way, challenging some of the foundational ideas of America and its story as a country of immigration. It just kind of blew my mind.

**Jessica Mendoza** (2:26)
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Tuesday, June 2nd.
Coming up on the show, The American Exodus.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:52)
So you're saying with Hilton Honors, I can use points for a free night stay anywhere?

**Jessica Mendoza** (2:56)
Anywhere.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:58)
What about fancy places like the Canopy in Paris?

**SPEAKER_6** (3:00)
Yeah, Hilton Honors, baby.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:02)
Or relaxing sanctuaries like the Conrad and Tulum?

**Jessica Mendoza** (3:05)
Hilton Honors, baby.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:07)
What about the five-star Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives? Are you gonna do this for all 9,000 properties?

**SPEAKER_7** (3:14)
When you want points that can take you anywhere, anytime, it matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay.

**Jessica Mendoza** (3:26)
When Joe and Drew started looking into this question of Americans moving abroad, they found that there weren't any statistics that they could easily go and get.

**Drew Hinshaw** (3:34)
So here's what's really interesting. America, we conceive of our country as one of immigration to such a degree that our government doesn't keep statistics on the number of Americans who leave. In fact, if you go to the State Department and ask how many Americans live abroad, you get like this, I don't know. It's like the number is anywhere from 4 million to 9 million.
It's all over the map.

**Jessica Mendoza** (3:57)
They basically had to piece it together for themselves based on incomplete data from the US government and elsewhere.
One piece of data they did have is the number of deportations that have taken place under the Trump Administration. Last year, the US removed 675,000 non-citizens, and many more foreign-born residents chose to leave.

**Joe Parkinson** (4:21)
But hidden within that is another story which is perhaps more surprising, and perhaps even has a longer historical impact. And that is that more Americans are choosing to leave of their own volition, natural-born Americans.

**Jessica Mendoza** (4:36)
Drew and Joe found through their reporting that at least 180,000 Americans moved out of the US last year. And they say that's likely a huge undercount.
And so why are so many Americans leaving?

**Drew Hinshaw** (4:51)
People tend to read this politically.
And you've got some commentators that have labeled this wave of American immigrants the quote Donald- since the numbers have really just risen under President Trump's second term. But what we find is this is a phenomenon that's been building for years. Trump's reelection, like yes, that was a factor for many, but for others not. And there's plenty of expats who voted for him. There's something is a deeper structural shift that's causing this.