1). “Americans Are Heading for the Exits: Go ahead and roll your eyes at those who want to emigrate amid Trump’s second term, but it’s a worrying trend”, Feb 20, 2025, Alaric DeArment, The New Republic, at < https://newrepublic.com/
2). “Stay and Resist, or Go into Exile? The dilemma of whether (and when) to leave the country when autocracy arrives”, Jan 03, 2025, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, at < https://lucid.substack.com/p/
3). “Americans LEAVING THE COUNTRY under Trump in RECORD NUMBERS”, Feb 26, 2025, David Pakman, David Pakman Show, duration of video 6:43, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?
4). “ 'I want to take care of me': Why more American women are moving abroad for a better life”, Nov 6, 2024, Kathleen Wong, USA TODAY, at < https://www.usatoday.com/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: Leaving the U.S. permanently should be seriously considered by anybody with left-of-center political views, or who is a member of the various groups excoriated by the American Fuhrer in his rantings and ravings: this includes women particularly those of reproductive ages, African Americans, Hispanics, and LBGTQ people, in other words the great majority of the population. The four items posted here are just a very small sample of what is posted on the internet. Most people will not or cannot leave and they will have to face whatever unpleasant conditions become the norm in the fascist run U.S. and resist if they can. Particularly young people and well-educated people have greater prospects of starting a new life overseas. But they need to start planning and taking action now.
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Stay and Resist, or Go into Exile?
"Should I leave the country now for somewhere safer?” “How do you know when it's time to move?" “Where should I go?” Almost every day now, as the inauguration of Donald Trump approaches, I receive queries like these from fellow Americans. The personalized nature of the decision to go into exile means that it is very difficult to counsel people. However, we can learn from the history of such fateful choices, which also teaches us that exile is not a linear path, nor an irreversible one.
I have been engaging with the history of émigrés from dictatorships for decades. My interest in studying Fascism was sparked by growing up in Pacific Palisades, California, where the writer Thomas Mann and other famous exiles had sought refuge from Nazism. Over the next century, America became a destination for so many others fleeing dictatorship. Now it may be our turn to experience some form of autocracy.
The title of this essay sums up the eternal dilemma of the anti-authoritarian: do I stay and resist, or go into exile? In reality, there is a third option, and as everywhere in the world, it is likely to be the most popular one. You stay put, and keep your head down and your criticism of the government private. That way you and your loved ones can minimize any adverse consequences while you “wait it out.”
Only a small percentage of the population leaves the country, or stays and actively resists, not least because these choices pose financial, legal, physical, and other challenges. And yet it is often these minorities who make history, whether by leading the opposition from abroad (as Belarusian politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is doing from Lithuania) or from inside the country, organizing protests or other resistance actions. And in our age of transnational repression, being abroad can still be dangerous for dissidents who persist with political activities.
Yet the questions that the politically active have grappled with have changed little since the dawn of authoritarianism. If all the resisters leave, who is left to fight for freedom? How can I turn my back on my country? “Guilt is exile’s eternal companion,” reflects the writer Hisham Matar, who, as the son of Jaballa Matar, an opponent of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, was forced to follow his compatriots’ fates from abroad and had no information about his imprisoned relatives back home.
And if the resisters who stay are silenced, who is left to lead the struggle, document the abuses, and counter the propaganda? Isn’t it more pragmatic to leave and be able to work for freedom rather than sit in jail? Alexi Navalny’s death in a Siberian lager is an example of what can happen to high-profile opponents of the dictator when they do not leave. Navalny could have easily remained abroad after his stay in Germany to recover from a Kremlin poisoning, but he refused to remove himself voluntarily and make it easier for the “thieving little man in his bunker,” as he memorably referred to Vladimir Putin during his 2021 Moscow sentencing, to claim victory over him and his anti-corruption work.
Some people escape one dictatorship by going to another. That might seem strange, and yet geographical proximity or the ability to get residence papers make it a not uncommon choice. Chileans who fled Augusto Pinochet’s military regime after the 1973 coup settled in Brazil’s military regime, or (if they were Communists) in East Germany. Germans found refuge from Nazism in Fascist Italy, and Syrians crossed the border to Turkey as they fled the Assad regime. Some exiles also return home, thinking maybe it won’t be that bad, before leaving again for good.
Many people want to know the right time to leave, and history is full of stories of people who did not leave their countries in time to escape persecution. There are good reasons for this. Dictators are impulsive, and love “shock events,” as I refer to them in Strongmen (which has exile as a theme). What is fine today may be grounds for persecution tomorrow, and all bets are off if a state of emergency is declared.
Going into exile also requires money and other things that many individuals do not have: a job offer, the right connections, entry papers, a way to care for loved ones who cannot leave, or a place to stay in another country. Those at elite institutions or multinational/global companies might have more possibilities to move abroad than activists or politicians rooted in local contexts.
That’s why we should not assume that those who stay in dictatorships are in denial. The Jewish linguist Viktor Klemperer is a case in point. He remained in Nazi Germany because he could not find a university position abroad (unlike his famous conductor cousin, Otto Klemperer, who moved to Los Angeles). “Don’t think about it, live one’s life, bury oneself in the most private matters!" he wrote in late September 1938, hoping, like other Jews who stayed in Germany, that each new round of persecution would be the last. "Fine resolution, but so difficult to keep.”
As we prepare for some form of autocracy in America, it is no comfort to know that Trump and his zealous and unscrupulous associates have advertised their desire to go after groups of people perennially targeted by authoritarians: immigrants, Muslims, Jews, opposition politicians, the unhoused, LGBTQ+ people, activists, journalists, scientists, and educators. It will be especially dangerous to be a transgender person in America, or anyone involved with reproductive and immigrant rights.
American movements in response to autocracy may differ from those of other populations due to the strength of states’ rights here. We are likely to see internal migration instead of exile, with people leaving states where voting, reproductive, LGBTQ+ and other rights are being extinguished.
There's also a history of regional movement in search of freedom in our country that we can build on. The Jim Crow South was a regional authoritarianism in many respects. That’s why the former CEO and President of the NAACP, Cornell William Brooks, states in our 2021 Lucid interview that we might begin to see “Black Southerners who came to New York and Chicago and Detroit” as “refugees; they were fleeing terrorism. And so Black folk are the descendants of these refugees, as well as of enslaved people."
While every person contemplating exile has their own unique situation and resources, there is one constant among such departures: when you exit your homeland, you enter into a state of waiting. Waiting for things to get better; waiting for the tyrant to die or, if elections still exist, be voted out; waiting for freedom to arrive so you can return to beloved places and people.
The Syrians who rushed to the Turkish border to enter their native country as soon as they heard that the Assad regime had fallen bear witness to the pain of living in exile, even if on the surface you have adjusted to your new life.
Iván Jaksic knew this pain well. He left his native Chile for Argentina and then the US after the 1973 coup. After a few years, he returned to Chile, only to be tried by a military court. It took another period in the US and Sweden for him to accept that his departure from Chile would be permanent.
Jaksic became a professor at Notre Dame University and Stanford University, and a US citizen. Exile saved Jaksic from serving in Pinochet's murderous military, and gave him a new start. Yet he never stopped missing his home.
Years later, he still longed for "a certain texture of air, and light, and tones of voice and fragrances of sea, mountains and food, from which you are, perhaps permanently, removed. There is also the longing for the life that could have been…. the desire to have lived a life without catastrophic breaks, a life in the place it was meant to be."
Americans Are Heading for the Exits
Go ahead and roll your eyes at those who want to emigrate amid Trump’s second term, but it’s a worrying trend.
In February 2023, I published an article in The New Republic about Americans, particularly from marginalized communities, who were looking to exit the country amid the rise of gun violence and far-right politics. It had been some time since I’d thought about that piece. But almost exactly one year to the day after it was published, it garnered the attention of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, in which the show’s titular host featured it in a segment that ridiculed the notion of people fretting about their safety in this country, imploring us instead to stay here and make it a better place. Maher took great pains to condescendingly wonder if I knew that being gay is criminalized in dozens of countries—well, duh—and about capital punishment in China. (Unlike, Maher, I actually lived there for three years, so—once again—duh.)
Still, I was more or less flattered by the attention, despite the maladroit purposes to which my original piece was put. But if Maher is reading this, then I’d like to invite him over for a delicious slice of crow pie. Because now that Donald Trump and unelected sidekick Elon Musk are taking a wrecking ball to our country and its democracy, my prediction of two years ago is coming true amid a rise in worrying signs that many people in this country indeed have their eyes on the exits, including those with skill sets we can ill afford to lose.
On February 8, German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported that the Max Planck Society—one of the world’s top scientific research institutions—is experiencing an uptick in applications from American scientists. Its president said the society regards the U.S. as “a new talent pool” at a time when the Trump administration seeks to cut billions in funding to the National Institutes of Health. There’s a deep historical irony in these recent developments: During the Third Reich, it was the Max Planck Society—then known as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society—that lost its best and brightest to the U.S. and other countries, including Albert Einstein.
A day prior, Irish broadcaster RTÉ reported that Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs has seen a 50 percent increase in the number of Americans seeking Irish passports, with some people specifically citing the new administration as a reason. Searches for terms like “dual citizenship” and “jus sanguinis” likewise saw significant spikes on Election Day and Inauguration Day, according to Google Trends. And a representative of Polaron, an Australian company that helps people obtain European citizenship by descent, told me that her firm has also “seen a steep increase in Americans wishing to leave their country, with many more keen to use their EU passport as a plan B.”
Some of the people who worked so hard to establish a new home in the U.S. as refugees are now desperate to get back out: The Guardian reported that Canadian police apprehended more than a dozen people from Venezuela, the Middle East, and Africa trying to cross the border in dangerously cold temperatures without proper clothing, as the Trump administration revoked humanitarian parole for Venezuelans, Haitians, and others, but threw open the door for white South African “refugees.”
These are small statistics and anecdotes. Moreover, most of the initial wave of American emigration will likely feature those with the means to leave—those who possess foreign passports, job opportunities abroad, or lots of disposable income. But this all points in the same direction: With Trump back in office and faithfully executing the blueprint for wrecking the country known as Project 2025 while collaborating with the world’s richest man to trash democracy and wage a war on brain cells in the federal government, a growing number of people in this country see the writing on the wall, and they’re looking for their bug-out plan. According to a Gallup poll released before the election, the 17 percent of Americans who said they wanted to leave the country in 2023 rose to 21 percent in 2024.
One user on TikTok posted a video of herself waiting in the car as her Mexican-American husband applied for dual citizenship at the Mexican consulate in Houston, noting that she plans to as well. “For me, I don’t think it’s going to stop with Mexicans,” she said in the video. “It’s going to keep going on down the list, and at some point, Black folks here in the U.S., we’re going to feel what’s happening—we’re already seeing what’s happening, so I don’t feel exempt.”
That she, her husband and others would want to take such precautions should come as no surprise. As conditions in the U.S. worsen and the country becomes increasingly poorer, increasingly authoritarian, and increasingly violent, there is a good chance that more will consider leaving. It’s not as if the Trump administration has gone out of its way to remind people that all are welcome in his America.
With executive orders, Trump has abolished official recognition of transgender and non-binary people, erasing references to trans people from the official website of the Stonewall National Monument. He has rolled back diversity, equity, and inclusion programs—and even discarded the 60-year-old Executive Order 11246, which bans discrimination based on race and other categories. We’re now careening toward a constitutional crisis as Trump threatens to simply ignore court decisions overturning his executive orders—including a decision that barred Musk and his army of mini-me flunkies from accessing sensitive information on millions of Americans and controlling payment systems at the Treasury Department—a move that would basically end the rule of law.
And as he fired hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration employees weeks after a fatal plane crash in Washington, Trump posted a quote on social media, “He who saves his country does not violate any law”—a quote apocryphally attributed to Napoleon but more recently made famous by Anders Breivik, the Norwegian white supremacist terrorist who murdered 77 people in 2011—in what could be interpreted as a proclamation that he’s above the law, a signal to his followers to commit violence on his behalf, or both.
No less dispiriting has been the cavalcade of mainstream media organizations normalizing the new regime, or the corporations kissing Trump’s ring and doing a 180 on support for DEI and LGBTQ people—not to mention the weak responses from many elected Democrats. It’s things like this that have convinced some people that the shining city on a hill is experiencing severe urban decay.
Brett, a San Diego-based TikTok user who did not disclose his last name, started a channel, Escape the USA, making videos that provide practical advice to Americans hoping to leave the country. While the channel is only a little more than a month old, it already has close to 11,000 followers. Having previously lived in Paris for nearly a year in 2014 following a health scare, he hopes to return to Europe and either find a job or publish his fantasy novel. But he specifically cited the Trump administration as his main reason for wanting to leave and said he began researching how to leave the country after the January 6 Capitol insurrection, and then saving money when Trump announced his candidacy. Now, he sees the potential for history to repeat itself.
“Hitler went after those who were not the same as others: disabled, LGBTQ individuals and clearly Jews,” said Brett, who is also gay and from a Jewish family, in an interview. “[Trump is] already categorizing subsets of individuals. It may not be tomorrow, but it’s definitely bound to happen soon.”
Naturally, descent into full-blown genocidal tyranny is not yet inevitable, particularly as Trump and Musk’s actions have encountered resistance, especially from the courts. And with many Western countries, especially in Europe, experiencing their own problems with far-right politics, the number of safe havens from autocracy is depressingly low, particularly as figures like Musk and Vice President JD Vance openly interfere in German elections by endorsing the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, as Vance did in a February 14 speech at the Munich Security Conference that left European leaders stunned. Nevertheless, Trump and his cronies have clearly spent their four years out of power carefully studying the authoritarian playbook of leaders like Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán. Now, Hungarians are warning us that if we don’t stop Trump, we could suffer their country’s fate. And lest anyone think far-right authoritarians are better at economic management, Hungary is a sign of what’s to come: Their economy is teetering while it hemorrhages people who no longer see a future there for themselves.
I hope we do stop Trump and Musk’s takeover of this country. But we have to be honest and acknowledge that if we fail—and fail we might—it could be a long and difficult time before democracy returns. It took 17 years for that to happen in Chile and 36 years in Spain. The Third Reich lasted “only” 12 years, but Hitler’s spell over Germany didn’t break until after the world’s deadliest war and genocide.
Even if the Democrats retake both houses of Congress and the White House, they will preside over a profoundly broken nation, where Trump distilled centuries’ worth of American poison into a fascist movement that will remain a threat for decades to come, with a best-case scenario being a whiplash cycle every four to eight years of decency and horror.
Obviously, emigrating won’t solve this country’s problems. But many of those problems will take a lot more than an election to solve because they stem from deep structural flaws in our system of government rooted in an antiquated constitution and a political culture contaminated by selfishness, ignorance, cruelty, violence, and authoritarian white, Christian supremacy. This is why it’s seemingly impossible to meaningfully address even serious problems like gun violence, let alone have nice things like universal health care, while other industrialized nations have accomplished both feats and more with little to no fuss. It’s why this country rejected a highly qualified presidential candidate who happened to be a Black woman, in favor of a psychopathic fascist who all but promised to ruin it.
If people wish to stay here and fight for a better country, then all power to them. But it’s also important to understand that many Americans have spent their lives fighting just to exist, and they have now watched 77.2 million fellow citizens spit in their faces by voting for Trump and countless more recklessly enable Trump’s victory by voting third-party, or abstaining from voting altogether. Thus, they may conclude that leaving for the sake of their well-being and sanity is a better choice than struggling in vain to save a country that apparently doesn’t value them from itself.
It’s a very personal choice, whether to stay and fight or go into exile, as New York University historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat illustrated in a January 3 Substack post, after receiving frequent queries from Americans about the possibility of leaving. Most, she wrote, will neither stay and fight nor flee: “You stay put, keep your head down and your criticism of the government private. That way you and your loved ones can minimize any adverse consequences while you ‘wait it out.’” And life in exile is hardly romantic–it’s filled with longing for home and a lot of guilt.
But if people decide it’s better to bug out, that’s really none of Bill Maher’s business, and it’s certainly not his place to scold those who are not straight, white, male multi-millionaires like him. So why get all worked up about it?
The reason it stings some people is because the entire notion of the U.S. being a country people flee from rather than fleeing to turns American exceptionalism on its head. Much like right-wing superpatriots’ reflexive defensiveness when someone points out how far we lag other industrialized nations in areas like health care access or public transportation, it’s a reminder of the hollowness of the refrain that we are “The Greatest Nation in the World”—a pin popping the balloon that is the American ego. Maher inadvertently reinforced this when he correctly pointed out that the U.S. is a nicer place to live than China or Uganda, but had to resort to jokes about bland Dutch food and elderly Italians playing bocce when comparing us to other industrialized democracies. It shows how full of ourselves we remain as a country, even as our political conditions have degraded to the point that some of us see a better life abroad than at home.
It’s emigration, not immigration, that should worry Americans. Because people wanting to leave, even if a relatively small number actually do it, is a sign that this country is losing its capacity to address even its most pressing problems. And authoritarian countries do not typically benefit when minorities, young people, and those with valuable skills start fleeing.
So, ridicule Americans who want to flee abroad all you want. But remember, there’s a reason why Germany produced the most Nobel laureates before World War II, but the U.S. took the lead afterward. The United States’ loss will be some other nation’s gain—a lesson that we used to teach the rest of the world, but no longer.
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'I want to take care of me': Why more American women are moving abroad for a better life
- More American women are choosing to move abroad for a better quality of life, citing political and safety concerns as major factors.
- The "She Hit Refresh" online community helps women over 30 navigate the process of relocating to Europe, offering support and resources.
- Many women are drawn to Europe's universal health care, lower cost of living, and safer environment compared to the U.S.
Just a day before the 2024 presidential election, Dee Segler got on a plane and moved to a country she'd never been to.
The timing for her relocation from the U.S. to the Netherlands – also her first time living overseas – was coincidental. Mostly, it's been a long time coming.
Now in her 50s, Segler has had the dream of living abroad since she was in her teens and went on a school trip to Europe with her French club. "I made a promise to myself at 18 years old: I was going to live abroad," she told USA TODAY. But life just kind of happened. I went to school, got married, and had kids."
She recently found herself where she could finally seize the opportunity. She was divorced, and her children were now grown and living on their own. A couple of years ago, she was laid off from her tech job and went back to school but found herself stuck in a junior role, struggling to make ends meet in the rising cost of living in Seattle. "Do I really want to go back to corporate America?" she asked herself.
She came across a Facebook group with over 10,000 members called She Hit Refresh, an online community dedicated to helping women over 30 years old move abroad to Europe. In June, she attended an online training about European visa options held by She Hit Refresh founder Cepee Tabibian. She learned how to easily obtain a two-year visa to the Netherlands as a self-employed American under the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty. The idea of making the move began to take shape.
Her decision became set in stone during the summer of 2022 when Roe v. Wade was overturned, erasing the constitutional right to abortion. "You have to understand, I nearly died after pregnancy complications, and I have two loved ones who nearly died after pregnancy complications, so this is personal for me," she said. Shortly after, the Supreme Court also ruled on presidential immunity regarding former President Donald Trump. "Do I stay here? What's going on?" Segler said. Days later, she reached out to Dutch immigration lawyers.
Why some travelers are skipping the US:'You guys are not afraid of this?'
Segler is just one of the growing number of American women who are either realizing lifelong dreams to live overseas or the fact that their quality of life could be better – for societal, health and safety, or political reasons – somewhere else. In 2021, a little less than half of American expats working abroad were women, according to a survey by InterNations.
With remote work on the rise and more countries offering digital nomad visas, relocating abroad has become more feasible than ever before. She Hit Refresh embraces the idea that for women, moving abroad presents unique opportunities and challenges – but mainly that it's never too late to make the leap.
'A very different life point'
She Hit Refresh began as a personal journey for Tabibian, who, at 35, felt ready to leave her tech job in 2015. Born and raised in Texas, Tabibian was eager to move to Spain – a place where she had taught English years earlier while earning her master’s degree. But teaching English again felt like "a step backward" at her age, when "everyone looks like they have it all together."
At the time, moving abroad felt like something reserved for young people fresh out of college or retired folks. "I just didn't find resources made for me, they didn't understand the challenges I was facing moving as a woman who had life under my belt and responsibilities," Tabibian said. "There is a lot of information for someone doing a gap year at university – a very different life point. Would I lose my career moving abroad? What if I have debt or a mortgage or children?"
Once in Madrid, Tabibian met other women expats and learned more about visa options for staying in Spain. In 2017, she started the Facebook group in response to friends and peers asking how she made the move.
Tabibian had struck a chord. In the first year, the Facebook group gained 4,000 women worldwide. She Hit Refresh started a blog and then ran its first retreat in Morocco in 2019. It now offers a four-day live master class training on Zoom that breaks down moving to Europe and helps attendees develop a personalized moving plan as well as a monthly membership to fast-track people's moves, including resources and the ability to connect women for support.
Women are seeking a better quality of life
While lots of the women are ready for a grand adventure, many are looking to move to a country that aligns more with their values, ranging from the universal health care found in every European country to fleeing the anxiety-inducing political landscape in the U.S. This year, 77% American adults say the future of the U.S. is the most significant source of stress in their lives, followed by the economy and 2024 presidential election, according to a survey by the American Psychological Association.
"With the increasingly polarized and divisive political climate in the U.S. since 2016, I began seeking a better quality of life overseas," said Cindy Sheahan, who backpacked the world before settling down in Portugal in 2022 and just picked up and moved to Sicily, Italy, in October. "Another Trump term was nonnegotiable for me." Sheahan started backpacking right around the time Trump first took office, although it was also prompted by her divorce.
Sheahan found She Hit Refresh when she was looking for a way to permanently live in Europe, ultimately qualifying for Italian citizenship by way of ancestry this year. In her 60s, she said she feels like she doesn't fit into U.S. culture and is drawn to the lack of consumer culture, lower cost of living and rich history found in countries like Portugal and Italy.
Safety also plays a big role for many of the women looking to move. "They find that Europe offers a political climate that feels less charged, less divided and generally more tolerant," Tabibian said. "This is also a big driver for our intersectionally marginalized members, such as our LGBTQ+ members and our Black members who find more welcoming environments and policies in Europe than in the U.S."
The 2024 Global Peace Index, which determines the safest countries based on factors like violent crime, political instability, and homicide rates, ranked the U.S. 131st out of 162 countries, while Iceland, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal, Germany and the Netherlands earned spots in the top 20. Rates for age-adjusted firearm homicide in the U.S. are much higher than in Europe – 19 times more than in France and 77 times more than in Germany, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
'A different choice'
Drawing from Tabibian's own experience, the She Hit Refresh community is a safe space around normalizing how relocating to another country looks different for women than it does for men, not only from reproductive rights to safety concerns but even just the societal pressures of settling down.
"There's that pressure to get settled down and have a family and have your life figured out, and those of us out there who want something else, we can feel other or maybe weird about making a different choice," Tabibian said.
She Hits Refresh shows that with the right tools and connections, women can navigate the complexities of a fresh start. "When I made my move, I felt like a lot of questions I got was a double standard, and maybe if I were a man, people wouldn't be asking me the same questions in terms of safety or would I be able to get married or have kids," Tabibian said.
For Segler, the Netherlands wasn't even on her radar until the training session. Just a few months later, her life is now starting a new chapter.
"I am a woman in her early 50s who has tried to do her best every single day for decades," Segler said. "I am burned out in certain areas. I want to take care of me."
