AmerExit: Is a post-election US expat boom to come?

FRANCE 24 English

With the re-election of Donald Trump, the number of Americans seeking to move abroad has jumped. In this edition of Entre Nous, Solange Mougin and Delano D’Souza take a look at "AmerExit" searches online. They find out where Americans are looking to go, and what visa schemes they could use to potentially move abroad. A programme produced by Amanda Alexander, Marina Pajovic and Georgina Robertson.  Visit our website: http://www.france24.com  Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/France24_en

Transcript

00:00for our entre nous segment and today we're looking at what's been pegged as

00:04Amer-exit or Americans that are looking to move abroad in the wake of Donald Trump's

00:09election victory. Solange Mougin joins me in the studio for more on this. Solange,

00:14so do Americans really who voted for Kamala Harris want to leave? Well Google searching

00:20how to move abroad and actually doing it and actually being able to do it they are very

00:24different things but there has been a spike in the number of online searches about this.

00:28Google doesn't provide the absolute figures but their analytics do show that leading up to the

00:33election and in the hours and the days following it well there were big spikes. To give you some

00:38examples searches like how to move to Europe rose 2,400 percent. How to move to English-speaking

00:46countries was up over 1,300 percent. Likewise for Canada, New Zealand, Australia searches.

00:53Now the New Zealand immigration website they also confirmed this sudden interest.

00:57They said that 25,000 new users from the United States they logged on to their site on November

01:047th. The election again was on the 5th. If you compare those 25,000 to the year before well

01:10there were just 1,500 Americans who logged on on that very same day and you can see as well how

01:16the Trump outcome sort of created such an interest in a spike. Now where else are Americans looking

01:22to move? Well according to VisaGuide.world, a site that specializes in visas, they analyze the

01:28Google data and they say that the top searches are naturally English-speaking nations like Canada

01:33due to its proximity, then New Zealand with its high quality of life, followed by the UK and

01:38Australia. Now when it comes to Europe, Ireland and Switzerland are popular in part because of

01:43the language as are Spain and Portugal which have special visa schemes. I'll talk about visas in one

01:48minute. The site says that there's a lot of interest as well in Costa Rica which has expat

01:54friendly policies and tax schemes. Taxes here are quite important. It's something you have to look

01:58into before making the move. There are also of course Mexico. It actually holds the

02:04number one spot as the country that has the most American expats thanks to its proximity,

02:09affordability and of course for Spanish-speaking Americans there is no language barrier. And where

02:14does France stand in all of this? Well currently there are thought to be around 100,000 Americans

02:20living in France right now and of course there is this long love affair especially in regard to

02:25Paris and in regard to Provence between Americans and France. Just take the craze over Emily in

02:30Paris as an example. That is just one of the latest ones. The first wave was actually thought

02:36to have occurred after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. After France sold Louisiana to the US,

02:42free blacks fled Louisiana and it's thought that 50,000 people moved to France. Of course

02:49over the decades people like Josephine Baker, Miles Davis, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin,

02:54Gertrude Stein, they've all contributed to this often romanticized idea of a freer political

03:00and often artistic life in France. Today Americans live here for a ton of reasons but some are here

03:06because of a rejection of the US political system. And this is not new as we see in this

03:12scathing view of American life from two decades ago, 2003, amidst the anger of the Gulf War.

03:20To express my profound disgust with the Bush government, I am going to burn my American

03:29passport. It's their view of the world, the American way of life. It's not who you are that

03:37matters to them, it's how much money you earn. That's the American way. It's being suspicious

03:44of your neighbors. It's thinking only about yourself and too bad for anyone else.

03:50But Solange, how easy or difficult is it for Americans to move to a foreign country?

04:00Well like with many things it often comes down to money. There are things that are called golden

04:05visas. These are schemes where a wealthy person can invest in the country, say buy a home,

04:10or make a donation, and in return they get a visa or a passport. Now many European nations

04:15have actually begun to clamp down or entirely end these schemes, including Portugal, Spain,

04:19and the Netherlands. One argument against them is that they can lead to money laundering and

04:24corruption. Other nations like Hungary, Malta, Greece, and Italy, they're actually reintroducing

04:30or keeping these golden visas. This is to boost investment. Then there are digital nomad visas.

04:36They allow people to live in a foreign country for a set period of time if the person has a remote

04:41job, say in the United States. There are some 50 countries in the world that have these visas,

04:46including Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Norway. Of course there are all sorts of other

04:50schemes, student visas for example. There are even sites, travel agencies, law firms that have

04:55become specialists in these expat moves. There are even sites that tap in, for example, to some

05:01women's eat, pray, love dreams and give master classes on how to live abroad. There are others

05:06that break down for free what you need to know depending on your own circumstances. One example

05:12of this is Reddit's AmerExit forum. It has, for example, 90,000 members. Of course, searching

05:19about how to become an expat does not mean that tens of thousands of Americans are suddenly going

05:25to pack up and hit the road. The election is not expected to create a mass exodus like we've seen

05:31with wars, for example, or other elections potentially that have caused a major upheaval,

05:36say the biennials in Algeria, the boat people in Vietnam, the partition of India and Pakistan.

05:41When Donald Trump was elected, thousands of Americans, they did say, where do we go now?

05:46Okay, interesting. Thank you very much for that, Solange. Solange Mougent,

05:49there with our Entre Nous segment today.

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