Since the summer of 2023, I have tracked many of the media stories about Americans who moved abroad. The stories, mostly appearing in tabloid Business Insider are all much the same: America is an awful country so this individual/couple/family moved to country X where life is wonderful.
And of course, you too would find a better life by moving abroad!
Most of these stories leave out critical details. I’ve summarized 150 stories in the Part 1 and Part 2 series, in the right column.
The reality is that it is very difficult for most Americans to move to another country.
I reviewed 150 stories from the past year and found that:
- About 2/3ds of the “This American moved abroad” stories in the media involve people who were already dual citizens, married a foreigner, or had a right of descent ancestry immigration privilege.
- About 17% have an “unknown” visa situation,
- and the few remaining ones are on work/education/investment visas,
- and 10 of those who “moved abroad” did not really move abroad and are actually on 90-day tourist visas.
More than half were either prior dual citizens or married a citizen of the other country; and most of the latter were attractive women who moved abroad, found romance and married. This may be biased towards women because most of the stories are written by women (almost all of the stories are written by women, and usually documenting their own experience). I believe there are two examples of American males moving abroad and then marrying a foreigner.
As you can see, the blue segment is the largest and includes those with dual citizenship, right of descent and residency/citizenship via marriage. Marriage is slightly more than pre-existing dual citizenship.
Work, education, etc visas (orange) are the 2nd largest group and green the third largest (tourist visas – contrary to the news story, these people have not moved full time). Finally, magenta is the group whose visa status is unknown.
![](https://coldstreams.com/travel/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-2.png)
For those on work/education visas, you generally need to be highly skilled in specific in-demand areas, or you are young and studying abroad at a foreign university. These are a tiny minority of the roughly 150 such stories in the media.
Most who moved abroad were already dual citizens, married a foreigner, or have a right of descent ancestry.
If you can’t do that, you chances of moving abroad are quite small.
They run these nonsense stories every week – here’s more that popped up today: ‘Older Expat Circles’: Why Some Boomers Are Leaving the US and Retiring Overseas and ‘You can live like a king’ by retiring in Europe, says CFP—but make these 3 moves first – only about 1% of Americans will retire overseas. In spite of the media nonsense.
Occupation – 60 of 150 work as writers
In 60 of the 150 stories I reviewed, one or both subjects in the stories were writers. That’s because writers have no need to be in an office. Because they do not do real in-person work – such as health care, fixing cars, manufacturing goods, providing retail services, construction – literally doing the bulk of essential work that makes our civilized lives possible, most people can’t frivolously choose to move abroad.
All or nearly all of the stories are written by women, typically writing about their own life and experiences.
Most of these writers are “coddled affluent professionals” – the “laptop class” – who do not generally do essential work. Yet for all their supposed insights into life, they can’t see this – and write endless stories about themselves! About how America is awful, and everything is better in foreign lands – you too should marry someone in another country (that’s the way the largest segment of those who moved abroad obtained residency visas – the 2nd largest group was they already had pre-existing dual citizenship – and those two groups are the majority of everyone who moved abroad.)
This is why the daily stream of “we moved abroad” stories are nonsense at best, and bull shit for the most part, peddling a nonsensical fantasy that almost no one in real life can or does achieve.
NOTE
The sample of 150 stories, of course, is not necessarily a random sample – it simply counts the subjects of fluff news stories about Americans who have moved abroad.