As political division deepens and institutions falter, a growing wave of Americans — from scientists to young families — are trading the U.S. for new beginnings abroad.
Alyssa Bolaños should have been a model of the American Dream. Born in New York to Cuban immigrant parents, she built a successful life, worked in immigration services, and raised two young sons with her husband. Yet, last year, she sold nearly everything she owned and boarded a plane to Uruguay.
“To us, leaving wasn’t about running away,” Bolaños says. “It was about finally being able to breathe.”
Online, thousands watch her videos detailing life as an expatriate. Some mock her for abandoning her country; others flood her inbox asking how to do the same. The phrase that keeps echoing through her comments — “the new American Dream is leaving America” — captures a growing sentiment that transcends politics: a quiet but decisive loss of faith in the nation’s direction.
From Dream to Departure
Under former President Trump’s second term, Bolaños watched immigration policies shift from harsh to hostile. Having once believed in reform from within, she realized she could no longer represent a system that now turned its suspicion toward people like her — citizens whose first language wasn’t English.
So, within weeks of the 2024 election results, she and her husband pulled their children out of school and joined a “world schooling” program for traveling families. Their first stop: La Barra, an upscale beach town in Uruguay, where their children’s classrooms now overlook the Atlantic.
“I don’t miss watching my kids practice hiding under desks,” she says. “Here, they just get to be kids.”
An Exodus in Motion
What was once a fringe lifestyle is fast becoming a movement. In 2025, the number of Americans applying for residency in the United Kingdom doubled year-over-year. Polls show nearly half of millennials and six in ten Gen Z Americans are considering life abroad.
Universities, struggling with declining enrollment and new visa restrictions, are feeling the aftershocks too. A 30–40 percent drop in foreign students has already cost the U.S. billions. Meanwhile, countries like France and Belgium are seizing the moment by recruiting American academics through scholarship initiatives designed for “at-risk” researchers — a direct response to U.S. political interference in science and higher education.
In France, the “Safe Place for Science” program offers a haven to U.S. scientists whose funding or fields have been defunded or deemed “unpatriotic.” The first eight arrivals included researchers in climate studies and anthropology — disciplines now caught in American culture wars.
The Elite Exit Plan
Even the wealthy are preparing to go. Citizenship-by-investment firms report an “unprecedented” surge in inquiries from Americans buying so-called “golden visas,” which offer second passports through real estate or philanthropic investment abroad.
“This isn’t panic; it’s preparation,” says Mohamed Bennis of Arton Capital. “They’re locking in a Plan B — before the window closes.”
And they’re not alone. The middle class is following, investing in affordable residency programs in Greece, Portugal, and Spain. For retirees, the financial logic is irresistible: pension income stretches further overseas, where healthcare costs a fraction of U.S. prices and gun violence is rare.
A Country Losing Its Core
The scale of this migration hints at something deeper than politics — a quiet erosion of confidence. For many, it’s not about opportunity, but safety, sanity, and sustainability. On forums like Reddit’s r/AmerExit, Americans share moving checklists and visa hacks with headlines like “Before It’s Too Late” and “Our Exit Strategy.”
Participants include architects, truck drivers, software engineers, and teachers — people once considered the backbone of the U.S. economy. Their departures represent not only lost labor, but a lost belief in the promise of the American experiment.
A Different Kind of Future
In Uruguay, Bolaños misses Cuban coffee and the noise of Queens, but she says the trade-offs are worth it. “Here, I don’t feel like an outsider for speaking Spanish. I feel like a person,” she says.
Her story — and thousands like it — suggest an America undergoing a quiet inversion. For generations, people risked everything to enter. Now, others are risking everything to leave.
Source: Holly Baxter, “A brain drain is coming for America — and it’s going to be catastrophic”, The Independent
