After Tuesday’s election results, many stunned Americans started to talk about leaving the United States, hoping to find a new home that is not on the fast track toward becoming a one-party dictatorship. Some people have asked me about this possibility, because I did that very thing more than a year ago. I am certainly glad that I did, and I understand perhaps better than anyone the feelings that many people are having right now. The realities of expatriating, however, are not what people might hope.
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, especially given how terrible the news has already been this week, but the fact is that “bugging out” is a realistic option only for a tiny number of people (if that). For those who can do so, the process is complicated and expensive (and time consuming), and the more obvious potential destinations are frankly not as “safe” as we tend to think they are. There is, in short, no quick and easy way out.
Yes, people move to new countries every day and have done so for centuries. The reality, however, is that moving more than very, very small numbers of people across national borders has always been nearly impossible, and it has only become more challenging in recent years. Understanding why requires some familiarity with the personal and political aspects of leaving one’s country.
The Motivation to Leave Is Real
Last week, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg described some right-wing trolls’ taunts claiming that liberals must not truly believe that Donald Trump is a fascist. One wrote: “It’s tempting to begin trolling my anti-Trump friends by asking if they are liquefying assets, getting passports in order, etc.?” Another: “So fascism is here and you’re not doing what people did when fascism showed up, which is contemplating emigration in terror or joining armed resistance.”
Goldberg points out that many people she knows have indeed been contemplating emigration. And again, I am one of the people who already did that. To be clear, the trolls that Goldberg quotes are overgrown adolescent bullies asking bad-faith questions, and they would surely have some sneering retort about people like me. Indeed, I have received “good riddance” taunts from the fever swamps. Even so, it is important to understand why almost no one can “just leave,” even when their fears are real.
I took my first not-just-thinking-about-it-anymore actions toward leaving the country more than two years ago. I contacted a BigLaw firm in the U.S. that has an immigration practice group, and the partner told me during the first couple of minutes of our conversation that a big part of her practice is built on people reacting to election results. She noted that her usual clients were Republicans who would panic and want to leave after the Democrats won an election, usually with the stated fear that “they’re going to raise my taxes.” A few such people would ultimately go through with their moves, but mostly it was just a lot of uninformed overreactions.
Indeed, I recall overhearing a couple on an Alitalia flight in 2009 talking to a flight attendant, who asked if they were American. They said that they lived in California, and the attendant naively asked them about the new U.S. President, saying that people seemed excited by Barack Obama. “Oh, we don’t like him,” the American wife said coldly. “He’s a socialist.” Being Italian, the attendant did not understand that this was a big insult, especially because her country is home not only to a Socialist Party but also a Communist Party, among many options in its multiparty democracy. “He’s a socialist” simply did not phase the young woman. Seeing the blank look on the attendant’s face, the American then added: “He wants to raise our taxes!”
At the time, I was mostly amused by the idea that some rich Americans had convinced themselves that taxes are per se socialism run amok. That wealthy people in the U.S. have been getting richer and richer after taxes, through Republican and Democratic presidencies alike, was not enough to convince them that the big bad liberals were going to seize their McMansions and throw everyone into gulags. They had all seen “Dr. Zhivago” one too many times.
In any case, the immigration attorney in 2022 noted that she had been receiving more and more inquiries from people with non-frivolous concerns about the path of American politics. She certainly did not try to deny that more than tax dollars were at stake for people who worried about the freedoms that would be lost in a restored Trumpian regime. We agreed that I was among the people who would be in the least immediate personal danger, but the dangers would be real. And they are.
The Time and Expense of Expatriating
Even with very real and legitimate concerns, the temptation is to think that “it won’t be that bad” or that there will be a way to strategically manage living in an increasingly oppressive state. But for those who do worry that it truly will be that bad, the realities of moving are quite daunting, and most people cannot possibly do all of the things that are necessary to move elsewhere.
It is not only that competent lawyers are expensive, although they are. I will not share the amount that I paid that American firm for doing preliminary research on possible destination countries and their legal requirements, but suffice it to say that the amount was ten times higher than I expected. And “competent” is a big part of the story, because even though my American lawyers were excellent, I ended up paying thousands of dollars to a lawyer in a destination country whose advice, I learned later, was completely wrong. Completely. I am very fortunate even to have the resources needed to take these steps, but there are no guarantees for anyone.
And to be clear, this is a situation where a would-be expatriate was not moving with a family, so there were no concerns about where the kids could go to school and so on. Finding housing, signing up for health care, getting a driver’s license, and all of the other realities of living in another country have been surprisingly stiff challenges even for a healthy adult man who can navigate legally treacherous seas. Doing all of those things for more than one person would multiply the expense and increase the legal complexity exponentially.
The Realities of 2024: Immigrants Are Not Welcome, for Bad Reasons but Also Perfectly Sensible Reasons
Trump’s toxic hatred toward “illegals” quickly revealed itself to be aimed at all immigrants—and even American citizens who can be othered—which unfortunately drove the U.S. political system beyond its breaking point this week. Some countries are going down that same ugly road, but even the countries that have not been consumed by xenophobia and bigotry have very understandable reasons to be less welcoming to immigrants.
Among the uglier stories, country after country in Europe has seen Trump-like nativist movements take over their politics, initially driven by refugee crises but drawing on hatreds that have never been extinguished. Hungary’s government is furthest along that hateful path, but it is difficult to name a country in Europe that is not roiled by anti-immigrant politics. Germany’s centrist government is collapsing, and the country that has tried hardest to learn the lessons of its murderous past is seeing nativist political parties make worrisome inroads there.
As I noted, however, there are other reasons beyond hatred that countries might become less welcoming of immigrants. Over the past decade or so, most countries have ended “golden passport” programs that provided entry by wealthier immigrants, mostly because those immigrants were buying up huge chunks of prime real estate but not living in their new supposed homes.
And even when the new migrants do live in their new homes, they create problems for locals by pushing up prices and creating dislocations. So many Americans moved to Portugal over the past decade, for example, that the Portuguese government has had to all but ban foreigners from moving to the country’s two largest cities.
Here in Canada, where I have spent most of my time since mid-2023, the country’s long-established welcoming attitude toward immigrants is being sorely tested. Something had to give, and last week, an excellent CBC video explained “Why Canada’s making massive cuts to immigration.”
In what can only be viewed as exquisitely bad timing for any Americans who are now thinking about crossing the northern border and staying here, the Liberal government in Ottawa announced very recently that they are reducing the goal for population growth to “basically zero,” in what was rightly called “a dramatic U-turn.”
It turns out that, due to a combination of unpredictable events, the country has seen its population grow by almost three times the amount that the government had planned, almost 98 percent of which was from immigration (rather than what is called “natural growth” from net births over deaths).
Even a country that wants to welcome newcomers does have practical limits, and Canada has more than exceeded all of them. The housing crisis is epic, the health care system (once a source of national pride) is stretched to the breaking point, and social services (such as educating the children of immigrants) simply cannot keep up.
Think of traffic on a highway (which is another source of frustration in Canada). No matter how many lanes exist, and no matter how many are added, there is at any given moment a capacity beyond which the system becomes clogged and simply stops working. Building new schools, staffing new hospitals and clinics, and most importantly adding houses and apartments takes time. So does expanding mass transit, which is the only viable solution to literal traffic jams.
No matter how open people’s hearts are, there are limits to how quickly a country can welcome new arrivals who want to live there. Canada’s cities have unhoused populations at levels that rival any American city, and I have listened as my very polite neighbours have become less and less patient with the effects that these unsolved problems are having here.
Again, the Canadian government has pressed “pause” on immigration, saying that they need three years simply to catch up with the unexpected surge of hopeful arrivals who are already here. That is not the hatred-based thinking that motivates Trump and his acolytes, but unfortunately, the problems that come with the logistics of large movements of people also push politics in that same direction.
The Possible Future of Trumpism in Other Countries
I am focusing on Canada’s issues because I am very familiar with them but also because this is the country that Americans always use as their default safety valve: “If ____ wins the election, I’m moving to Canada.” In a Dorf on Law column earlier this year, I noted that the Canadian opposition is itself pretty Trumpish and that in any case fascist movements—even though they are supposedly nationalistic—are a global phenomenon that move across borders and try to take root even in the least likely places.
That is not to say that there is no difference between, say, Hungary and the Netherlands. One is already a one-party autocracy, while the other is showing disturbing signs of moving in that direction. Still, the latter is a more stable and welcoming place than the former, and it will likely be so for a long time. But maybe not. Even though I am worried about the future of the Canadian political system, I am glad to be here rather than in my former home in Florida (especially this week). We cannot know whether the Dutch, the Canadians, the Germans, or anyone else will go where the Hungarians and now the Americans have gone.
The larger point, however, is that even countries that do not turn into dystopian nightmares have limited capacity to help. Before Canada’s recent immigration pause, the goal was to bring in something along the lines of 300,000 to 400,000 new immigrants per year—from all over the world. Even a tiny percentage of Americans trying to get in would overwhelm the system.
There will, of course, be individual cases of people who succeed in crossing borders. The reality, however, is that it is expensive and difficult to do so—and, as my experience demonstrates, hardly an overnight process—and it will only become more challenging now.
In the hours since Trump’s win was announced, commentators in the U.S. have talked about “resisting,” and for good reason. Some people would never consider leaving, because they will not give up on their country. Even among the others who have lost hope, however, only a tiny few will be able to navigate a move abroad, so there truly is no alternative to staying and trying to minimize the damage, hoping and working toward a better day.