What to Know About Americans Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers

leopoldj 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is a better link, no?

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/americans-leaving-the-us-migrati...

toomuchtodo 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you can leave, why would you stay?

> America’s enviable salaries and stock gains powered by the U.S. economy allow a new class of students, remote workers and retirees to finance a second chapter abroad. Relocation agencies say their new clients include Midwestern small-business owners—architects, financial advisers and engineers—saving on healthcare costs by living seven time zones east of their clients. “The wages are higher in the U.S. but the quality of life is higher in Europe,” said Chris Ford, 41, who works for a Dallas real-estate investment firm while helping run a kids’ baseball league in Berlin, whose roster has doubled in size for each of the past three years.

> 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 nearly 10,000 people from the U.S. in 2025, about double those who came in 2024.

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mock-possum 4 hours ago | parent [-]

… because you were born here, you love it here, all your family and friends and everyone you’ve ever known and loved, everyone you’ve ever cared for or care for you, all are here?

You’re really suggesting people should leave behind everything they’ve ever known and start a new life in a foreign country because of… healthcare?

	▲	toomuchtodo 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I’m assisting Americans leave through a nonprofit, and some other efforts other people are running. I think leaving for more affordable healthcare is one reason (savings can be anywhere between $10k-$35k/year, depending on number of dependents/family size), but there are a lot of other reasons as well to leave the country. That is the lens through which I see this issue. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161587 (expat resources) https://healthcareinfusion.org/ (for healthcare workers interested in Canada) Work, Invest, Inherit: How Americans Can Actually Move to Europe - https://www.bloomberg.com/explainers/how-americans-can-move-... \| https://archive.today/IYsA3 - January 2nd, 2026 As this piece mentions, Americans are leaving in record numbers, so it’s clearly possible, and it is happening. Broadly speaking, everyone who wants to get out, should have the opportunity to get out, because better lives can be lived in developed countries. The European Union is becoming the world’s “quality of life” superpower - https://thinkeuropa.dk/en/notat/2025-10-the-european-union-i... - October 5th, 2025 Best Countries for Quality of Life - https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/best-countries-fo... If you love it in the US, I would genuinely ask: “why?” The collapsing healthcare system? The endless mass shootings? The low quality work environment for workers? The constant unshakable economic precarity a majority of Americans face? The higher mortality rate and lower life expectancy than peer wealthy nations? Friends and family, certainly, I can understand, but I don’t understand the desire for the rest of the trimmings of the torment nexus. It's an economic human factory farm with good PR (to convince immigrants to come for "a better life" who are fuel for the low economic machine) and running on inertia from the Bretton Woods Agreement, no more, no less. Trump administration to End Medicare Drug Plan Subsidy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49089358 - July 2026 What Medicaid Cuts Mean For American Hospitals - https://www.npr.org/2026/04/07/nx-s1-5776610/what-medicaid-c... - April 7th, 2026 States are Beginning to Grapple with Federal Medicaid Cuts Impact on Rural Health Care - https://ccf.georgetown.edu/2026/03/31/states-are-beginning-t... - March 31st, 2026 U.S. health care is broken. Here are 3 ways it's getting worse - https://www.npr.org/2025/12/04/nx-s1-5629211/health-care-bro... - December 4th, 2025 https://www.massshootingtracker.site/ Wikipedia: Work–life balance in the United States - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work%E2%80%93life_balance_in_t... Most Americans don't earn enough to afford basic costs of living, analysis finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44119317 - May 2025 (Report: https://www.lisep.org/mql) Why Does the US Have Higher Death Rates than Other Wealthy Nations? - https://www.bu.edu/articles/2026/why-does-us-have-high-death... - May 8th, 2026 How does U.S. life expectancy compare to other countries? - https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-lif... - March 31st, 2026 International Comparison of Health Systems - https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/health-policy-101-i... - October 8th, 2025 We used to be able to buy things in this country - https://dannykatch.substack.com/p/we-used-to-be-able-to-buy-... - Jul 21st, 2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027462 (additional citations) And so, observing these record numbers and the overwhelming data and observations around current state and trajectory of the United States and its critical systems humans rely on I would say: "Those are rookie numbers, you’ve gotta pump those numbers up." (have prepared to leave the US for Europe, but haven’t left permanently yet)