A common meme in the U.S. media is that Americans can easily pack up and move to any country, usually Europe. And Americans are “Flocking” to European destinations.
All very quaint – and yet it is a total lie!
Reality check: unless you fit into specific categories, you cannot easily move to Europe – or most any country.
Only those with the right skills, or who are young (and have the right skills) or are elite, or who have an immigration privilege by birth, ancestry, or marriage can readily move elsewhere.
In the real world, few Americans move overseas. Obtaining a residency visa or citizenship in most countries is difficult or impossible unless you have special skills or the right ancestry.
Contrary to numerous media stories about Americans moving abroad, about 1.3%-1.6% of Americans live abroad and only about 1% of U.S. retirees move abroad (and many do so because they had right of descent immigration privilege or were already a dual citizen). Few working Americans move abroad permanently.
No one knows the exact number as Americans moving out are not counted or registered anywhere.
“I Moved Abroad” Stories are Designed as Click-Bait
The TL;DR summary is that these “I moved abroad” stories are a formula staple of the media – designed as click-bait aspirational narratives – leading to most of the stories being the same. Editors and content creators know this – and cater to these formulaic stories. The stories are generally unrealistic and written by and about highly privileged individuals. About one-third of them wrap the “I moved abroad” stories with a romance – an attractive, young, highly educated, American woman moved abroad, married and lived happily ever after. This is not by accident: most consumers of travel and moved abroad stories are women (64% of international travelers from the US are women) and the stories are designed to appeal to women.
A “romance” “I moved abroad” story is a double whammy for ratings. Many stories take the form of romance novels: beautiful young woman is faced with a crisis, travels abroad, meets Mr. Wonderful, falls in love, gets married and lives happily ever after in a place where everything is so much better than America!
See more here: Media: The overwhelming media bias with “I moved abroad” stories – Coldstreams Travel and Global Thinking
A Review of Business Insider, CNN, CNBC, etc Travel Stories
In about 2021 to 2025, I reviewed stories on CNN, CNBC, Business Insider and other media, about Americans “who moved abroad”. I chose to make an annotated bibliography of the stories and then analyzed the stories.
Most of “I moved abroad” articles can be summarized as:
- America is awful for some reason,
- So this couple moved to country X.
- Where everything is idyllic.
Who Gets to Move Abroad?
About 64% of all of these stories involve persons who obtained their residency or citizenship via marriage, prior dual citizenship or a “right of descent” ancestry privilege.
- About 40% of the subjects of these stories obtained their residency visa or citizenship via marriage,
- About 16% had prior dual citizenship,
- About 8% had a “right of descent” ancestry privilege
In the case of “Marriage”, in almost all stories, the subject is an attractive, well educated, young American woman, typically working as a content creator, who married a foreigner.
In the marriage category, about 38 percentile points are female and 2 percentile points are men.
For most people, moving abroad requires an “immigration privilege”, such as the above. If you are outside those categories, moving abroad is far more difficult and may be impossible.
To Move Abroad
- Be young
- Be female
- Be attractive
- Earn a degree in English literature, creative writing, or journalism at an elite university
- Do a study abroad
- Become a freelance travel writer
- Already have dual citizenship or a right of descent ancestry. This requires being born into the right family.
- A work option – typically have a degree in an “in demand” field, which is typically health care or engineering – and obtain a sponsored employment visa. Fewer than 15% of the subjects moved abroad on a work visa, however.
This chart illustrates the main types of visas used
Data Table (January 2026)
| Marriage | 40.34% | |||
| Dual citizen | 15.65% | |||
| Work | 14.43% | |||
| Unknown | 8.80% | |||
| Ancestry | 7.58% | |||
| None/Tourist | 6.85% | |||
| Other/Education | 5.38% | |||
| Investment | 0.98% |
How Did They Get a Residency Visa?
Many, if not most of the pop media stories about moving abroad leave out details of how the subject of the story obtained a residency visa. The majority of stories involve someone who had an immigration privilege (64% of the story subjects).
Researching those who appear in the stories, here’s what typically happens.
- The largest category are young women who married a foreigner, and through marriage, obtained residency or citizenship
- The second biggest category had prior dual citizenship due to where they were born or because their parents were citizens of another country
- A work visa was the solution for 14% of those in the stories.
- About 8% had a “right of descent” ancestry privilege – they could get a residency visa or citizenship because their parents or grandparents (or in some cases great grandparents) had been citizens of another country.
- Some of subjects do not have residency visas and commute to and from the U.S. – they have not really moved abroad. Or you could say they moved part time but stay for less than their 90 day tourist visa permits.
- Some start out with an education or work visa but then marry a foreigner, which becomes residency via marriage.
Most of those who moved abroad permanently had an immigration privilege that you likely do not have: They had prior dual citizenship, or a right of descent privilege, or they married someone. Unless you fall into those 3 categories, most of you will not be able to move abroad.
Who Writes These Stories?
Most of the stories are written by a woman who works as a freelance writer – from anywhere. Very few stories involve people who work in health care, engineering, construction or other fields that require on site presence. None are blue collar workers who build things. A small number are academics who took an academic or research position abroad. Positions that most of you will not qualify for.
The Standard Narrative
Almost all stories follow the same formula – “America is awful, so this solo woman/couple/family moved to country X where everything is better, even idyllic!”
Surprisingly, many of these writers were born abroad, had lived abroad or traveled extensively abroad while growing up – they were never “that American” by virtue of their unique upbringing. Now living abroad, they look down upon, even disdain, those of us living in America. It’s not a positive perspective. Another large cohort attended private schools, then elite universities – made possible by American wealth – but then proclaim, “America is awful!”.
A second oddity is many stories feature a solo woman traveler (who is a writer, often of European-American or European heritage), or Black or Asian (including but not limited to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai), Hispanic, Indigenous heritage, gay and lesbian couples, and a small number of trad-families.
After summarizing 400 stories, almost all involve solo women travelers, plus a handful of gay and lesbian couples and several transgender individuals.
Only a handful involve straight white male solo travelers; this group does not exist in the pop media stories about moving abroad! The media knows this: Solo travel: Almost no male solo travelers.
The third component is currency arbitrage.
Living in Country X is cheaper than living in the U.S. – but this is misleading due to currency arbitrage. Americans have their high U.S. salary while living in a cheap country!
Americans who move abroad often earn their income from the U.S., in U.S. dollars. The U.S. currency is “strong” in many countries because the local economy pays low wages to locals. The effect is Americans live like the wealthy in other countries – because of their U.S. income and US citizenship privilege (yet they bash the U.S. as “awful”).
Locals, who earn low wages in the local currency, do not live wealthy lives in those countries.
Americans and others moving to these countries have an adverse impact on the locals: Gentrifying beyond borders: How Americans displace locals abroad (prismreports.org)
Many Americans have privileges that enable them to become “expats” and move where they want. When their situation changes, they move on to someplace else – which the locals cannot do. Those who are moving abroad, often as social media influencers, are oblivious to their privilege – and simultaneously bash the United States which makes their privilege possible. The influx of “wealthy” Americans results in higher real estate prices, rent costs – raising the cost of living for the locals.
As a general summary, Americans who move abroad came from American wealth, traveled the world growing up and doing study abroad programs (up to almost 50% of writing students do these), attended elite universities, pursued expensive degrees in fields that generally do not pay well – and then leave the US, become “travel writers” and write about how awful the U.S. is. Make it make sense?
The Bias In the I Moved Abroad Stories
80% of the stories involve subjects that moved to Europe – but in real life, only about 20% of Americans who move abroad move to Europe! Perhaps 40% move to Mexico or Canada – yet this category accounts for less than 5% of the stories. The bias in the coverage is amazing.
Annotated Bibliography
Over a period of several years spanning roughly 2021-2025, I made notes on the “I moved abroad” stories in the form of an annotated bibliography. These notes, plus the original stories, and other resources such as the personal Instagram, web sites or LinkedIn profiles of the subjects of these stories were used to understand their visa and lifestyle status. This data was then collated into a spreadsheet to create the analysis shown above.
The annotated bibliography is contained in 4 separate posts – at one point, the posts became too large for WordPress to handle, at the time – thus, the bibliography was split into separate posts.