Canadian citizenship by descent just became one of the easiest second-passport routes available to Americans, and the country’s immigration agency has the application backlog to prove it. In January 2026 alone, nearly 2,500 Americans filed for proof of Canadian citizenship, ten times the figure from second-place United Kingdom and more
More than 500 Golden Visa investors, predominantly American, are organizing a collective lawsuit against the Portuguese state after Lisbon raised the citizenship timeline from five years to ten years for most non-EU nationals (and to seven years for EU and CPLP nationals). The group is coordinating through WhatsApp and plans
Grenada citizenship by investment for Americans drew 27 applications in both 2024 and 2025, according to figures published by the Investment Migration Agency of Grenada. The annual American count held steady even as the program’s total intake fell from 2,297 applications in 2023 to 469 in 2025. Grenada raised its
The share of US passport holders reached 48% of the American population in 2024, up from 5% in 1990, according to State Department figures cited in a January 2026 Congressional Research Service brief. The Bureau of Consular Affairs issued 27.3 million passports in fiscal 2025, a single-year record. More than
US asylum claims in Canada reached 634 in 2025, more than triple the 204 filed the year before and the highest annual total on record outside the first Trump administration. The figure comes from the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB), which publishes claims by country of alleged persecution.
American naturalizations in Italy reached 824 in 2024, up from 280 in 2014, according to Eurostat’s citizenship acquisitions dataset. The trajectory is the steepest on record for Italian citizenship by descent for Americans, a five-year compound annual growth rate of about 15.6%. Then, in March 2025, Italy slammed the door
American students studying abroad reached roughly 90,000 in the most recent reporting year, up from about 50,000 in 2019, Institute of International Education data tracked by CBS News shows. The strongest single-country signal sits in the United Kingdom, where US undergraduate applications through UCAS rose 14% in the 2025 cycle,
US brokerage account closures have become one of the least-visible costs of American emigration. Major firms have restricted or terminated accounts held by clients with foreign addresses, citing the cost of complying with overlapping regulatory regimes for small numbers of non-resident clients. The list of institutions that have pulled back
Americans moving to Spain received 15,638 first residence permits in 2024, more than double the 7,383 issued in 2015 and the largest American pipeline in Europe after France. The stock figure is bigger still: Spain holds 57,379 American citizens with valid residence permits, alongside 76,180 US-born residents, a gap reflecting
Overseas voter turnout tripled in the 2024 General Election, but the new high-water mark still left 89% of eligible Americans abroad on the sidelines. About 11.0% of the estimated 2.2 million voting-age U.S. citizens living outside the country returned a ballot, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program’s 2024 Overseas
German citizenship for Americans hit a record 1,275 acquisitions in 2024, up from 225 the year before. The five-fold jump in 12 months tracks directly to a single legal change. Germany’s reformed Nationality Act took effect June 27, 2024, allowing non-EU citizens to retain their original passport for the first
The US passport decline accelerated in 2026, with the Henley Passport Index ranking the United States 10th globally, down six places from 4th in 2006. The Henley Passport Index 2026, compiled from International Air Transport Association data, marks this as the third-largest two-decade decline of any country, behind only Venezuela
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