Interest in moving abroad skyrockets after the US elections

() – Just after the election, Dana McMahan rented a tiny apartment in Paris, moved up the dates of a flight initially booked for a vacation and began the process of applying for a four-year visa that she hopes will allow her to work in the French capital.

McMahan, 50, has long dreamed of living in France. The first time he thought about saying goodbye to the United States was when Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016, he says. But although the idea had been brewing for some time, it had not yet taken the leap.

“But I knew that if this was how the election went, I had to do it,” said McMahan, who lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

McMahan disagrees with Donald Trump’s character and past behavior, and has blogged about his anguish that the nation chose him “over a confident, competent, and easily accomplished black woman.” qualified.”

She’s not the only one. Interest in moving outside the United States has skyrocketed, with immigration companies reporting an increase in inquiries since the election. And some Americans say the results have prompted them to make plans to leave the country.

It is impossible to know how many Americans are seriously considering leaving the country. But the truth is that there are signs that the number of people considering this possibility has increased after the elections.

Google Trends shows that U.S. searches for “move to Canada” hit a 12-month high between Nov. 3 and Nov. 9, before falling back to a level slightly above where the term has hovered during the last decade. most of last year.

But the surge in interest is unlikely to translate into a mass exodus. Moving to Canada was a hot topic following the 2016 election, but immigration statistics collected afterwards did not show a significant uptick.

Moving abroad is a complicated process and there are a series of factors such as work, school-age children, elderly parents, that can stop those who consider it.

Still, there is an uptick in people studying the possibilities.

Immigration Services Websites Welcome to Portugal and Bureaucracy.eswhich helps Americans move to Portugal and Spain, told they had seen a huge increase in traffic to their websites after the election, as well as an increase in inquiries about visa processes.

According to Bureaucracy.es, since the results of the elections were known, the number of clients requesting information about the process of obtaining visas in Spain has increased by more than 300%.

Marco Permunian, from Italian Citizenship Assistancea company that helps pave the path to Italian citizenship, said it asked its team in Los Angeles to start work early the day after the election.

“At 6 a.m. California time, the phone was already ringing with people saying they wanted to move,” he said, noting that the spike was about double what the firm estimated in 2016 after Donald Trump’s victory. .

Permunian said he has also heard recently from people who were considering leaving the U.S. if Trump lost the election, but with “less of a sense of desperation” than those who don’t support Trump.

Dana McMahan got a tattoo on her forearm during a recent visit to France that says “Allons y,” “Let’s go,” in French.

And that’s what the writer, who is a Democrat, plans to do in January, when she will land in Paris to start a new life in a place she has visited since 2001 and said always felt like home.

As soon as he heard the election results, McMahan said he moved up the dates of a flight he had booked to Paris for a vacation later in 2025 and for a much longer stay.

So he contacted friends in town and cast a wide net on social media asking if anyone knew of a place he could rent. The next day, he had found a small apartment in the 20th arrondissement of Paris for 1,100 euros a month, including utilities. He cashed in an IRA to pay for it.

McMahan plans to enter France with a tourist visa and, since the elections, has started the procedures to apply for the talent visa four years, a residence permit granted to self-employed workers, including artists and writers.

The plan is that once McMahan gets the visa, her husband and dog can join her. But he has no illusions that things will be easy.

“I’m scared to do this, I’m 50 years old. My life is here in Kentucky. My family and my friends. But it is very important that I go and find out if Paris is really my home. And I think it is.”

Others have not yet made such concrete plans, but feel the urgency to leave the United States.

A black woman from a red state says living in the United States right now feels “like being a crab in a pot of water that’s being turned up to boil.”

The former federal police officer, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said she woke up on Nov. 6, turned to her husband and said, “It’s time to go.”

The woman, a Democrat and mother of two, began thinking about leaving the United States in 2023, after the Supreme Court eliminated affirmative action in college admissions. But the elections were a turning point.

“I knew that if Trump was elected everything would accelerate,” he says.

The black woman in her 40s said the affirmative action decision “makes it seem like black people are on an equal footing and that racism is over and there is no prejudice. And that is not so.”

She feels frustrated. “Just when it seems like things are starting to get better, it’s like we’re taking one step forward and two steps back.”

For this family, the elections are too many steps backwards to ignore.

But his children didn’t agree right after the election. Then one of them learned from a friend that she had received one of the racist text messages with references to slavery that were sent to black people across the country after the election. Their son was scared and then understood why his parents wanted to leave.

“Do I think they would try to return black people to slavery? Realistically, no. I don’t think black people would leave. But still, it’s just the fact that people are even in that mindset to send something so horrible,” said the mother, who lives in a state that went for Trump.

She has begun to learn about visa requirements in France, the family’s first choice for moving, followed by the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. You may consider being hired by a company abroad or studying in those countries.

And although “of course” he would have stayed in the US if the Harris/Walz candidacy had won, he says that the family plans to leave for the summer, as long as they obtain visas.

“We’ll figure it out, and if it doesn’t work out, we’ll come back. We are not going to give up our nationality. At least we will know that we tried,” he says.

Right now, what seems unsustainable is staying in the United States.

“I just wanted to get my degree and change things here,” said the woman, who is pursuing graduate studies. “But I feel like staying here now is like the people who stayed in Germany, the women who stayed in Iran in the ’70s, the people who stayed in Afghanistan after knowing that American soldiers were leaving.”

Moving to another country is a big decision that requires not only navigating new bureaucracy, but acclimating to the culture, learning the language and finding friends and a routine, among other things, said Jen Barnett of Expatsi, a company that helps Americans navigate the process of moving abroad.

In the 10 months before the election, Barnett said a total of 60,000 people had completed a questionnaire on their company website that helps them find the countries that best suit their needs and situation. In the weeks after the election, according to Barnett, more than 48,000 more people had already completed the questionnaire.

Without a doubt, only a small part of the people who consider this option take the step.

Even in the United States, it is not always easy to grab your things and change states for one more in line with your political beliefs.

Mai Nguyen, who lives in Florida, says she wants to leave the state to go elsewhere in the United States, but she can’t because she shares custody of a minor with her ex-husband.

“I don’t want to be dramatic, but it no longer seems like a safe environment to raise a girl,” said Nguyen, who is a Democrat. “I don’t think our public education system can keep up with more progressive states and I don’t think our laws protect our girls.”

Nguyen said he might consider a move to his hometown of Danang, Vietnam, at some point in the future, but his family is more likely to make a move closer to home.

“First we will look for a Democratic state,” he said.