We need a timeline covering 2016–2026:
Measure What we need Americans moving abroad
Annual estimates Americans returning
Annual estimates Net international migration
2016–2026 Citizenship renunciations
Annual totals Americans obtaining foreign residency
Country by country Americans saying they want to leave
Polling Actual destinations
Mexico, Canada, Europe, etc.
Reasons for leaving Politics vs. economics vs. lifestyle
The Census Bureau gives us an important anchor: net international migration fell from 2.7 million in 2024 to 1.3 million in 2025, a 53.8% decline, and Census says the change reflected both reduced immigration and increased emigration.
The Wall Street Journal's analysis of data from 15 countries found at least 180,000 U.S. citizens relocated abroad in 2025. That's an important number, but because it covers only 15 countries, we should call it “at least 180,000,” not the total American exodus.
Step 2: Find out where they're going
This could be one of the strongest parts of the story.
We'll construct a table for:
Mexico | Canada | Portugal | Spain | Germany | Italy | UK | Ireland | Australia | Costa Rica | Panama
For each country:
2023 → 2024 → 2025 → 2026
and determine whether American arrivals actually increased.
Step 3: Separate “left” from “left America”
This is critical.
Someone spending six months in Portugal isn't necessarily an emigrant.
Someone obtaining permanent residency is different.
Someone who moves permanently but retains U.S. citizenship is different again.
And someone who renounces citizenship is in an entirely different category.
Nearly 5,000 people renounced U.S. citizenship in 2025, the highest level since 2020.
And beginning April 13, 2026, the State Department reduced the renunciation fee from $2,350 to $450.
Step 4: The Trump question
This is where we need to be disciplined.
We'll ask:
Did Americans begin leaving because of Trump, or did an existing trend accelerate after his 2024 election?
We'll compare:
2016 Trump election → 2020 pandemic → 2021–24 Biden years → November 2024 Trump election → 2025 → 2026
Then look for changes in the data rather than assuming causation.
Step 5: Find the people
This is what will turn the spreadsheet into journalism.
I want four or five real Americans:
- someone who left because of politics
- someone who left for economic reasons
- someone who retired abroad
- someone who left for family/quality of life
- someone who seriously considered leaving but stayed
Then ask each:
What finally made you leave?
That's the human heart of the story.
The eventual headline
I'd keep this one on the wall:
THE AMERICAN EXODUS
Who is leaving, where are they going, and is Trump driving them out?
And one important correction to our earlier conversation: we shouldn't use “180,000 Americans left” as though that's an official nationwide count. It's a minimum derived from 15 destination countries. That's exactly the kind of distinction that will make this investigation credible.
Next, I'll build the actual 2016–2026 data table and source each number. That's where the story really begins.
where are they leaving from? Blue or Red states?
Yes. And this may be one of the most revealing parts of the investigation.
But there is an important data problem: we currently do not have a reliable 2025 national dataset showing which U.S. states the Americans who emigrated abroad came from. I would not pretend that we do.
What we can do is build the answer from several datasets.
The first clue: blue states are losing people, but not necessarily to other countries
The Census Bureau says emigration increased during the July 2024-June 2025 period, but its state estimates are for net international migration, not a simple count of Americans leaving each state. Every state still had positive net international migration, meaning more people entered from abroad than left for abroad.
That means we cannot say California lost X Americans to foreign countries based on the Census state numbers.
And this is where the investigation gets interesting.
We have excellent data on Americans moving between states
The IRS has state-level outflow data based on tax-return address changes. It can tell us who left California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Texas, Florida, etc., and where they went. The latest available IRS state migration dataset currently runs through 2022-23.
That gives us a potential political migration baseline.
For example, the Tax Foundation's analysis of 2024 domestic migration found particularly high outbound rates from New York and California, while lower-tax states such as South Carolina, Idaho, North Carolina and Tennessee had strong inbound migration.
But that's domestic migration, not emigration.
Here's the question I really want to answer
Instead of simply asking:
Are Americans leaving blue or red states?
Let's investigate three different migrations:
BLUE → ABROAD
Are people from California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois and Washington disproportionately moving overseas?
RED → ABROAD
Are people from Texas, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and other Republican-leaning states also leaving?
BLUE → RED → ABROAD
Are some Americans first leaving blue states for red states, and then some of those people subsequently leaving the country?
That third category could produce a very different story from the simplistic “liberals are fleeing Trump” narrative.
And there's another wrinkle Florida and Texas, two major Republican states, had the highest net international migration totals in 2025, followed by California and New York. Florida had about 178,700 net international migrants and Texas about 167,500.
So foreign migration into red states is enormous.
That tells us something important: population change alone can't tell us whether Americans are leaving.
Should we build a 50-state matrix with: 2020 election | 2024 election | population | domestic outflow | international outflow/emigration | citizenship renunciations | change since 2016
Then we'll classify each state Blue / Red / Swing and calculate: Americans leaving abroad per 100,000 residents
That's the number I really want.
Because if California sends 30,000 people abroad and Texas sends 25,000, California's raw number is larger.
But if Texas has a much higher per-capita rate, the story changes.
And if the data show blue-state residents are disproportionately emigrating, we have one story.
If they show red-state residents are leaving at similar or higher rates, we have a much more interesting one.
That is the next piece of reporting I could tackle. The IRS and Census datasets give us the foundation, but we'll need destination-country data to reconstruct the actual U.S.-state origins of the 2025 emigrants.
So to recap: What say you... Is this interesting?
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