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I have lived on and off in France for about 44 years, sometimes quite permanently, more often itinerantly, always in the same building around the corner from the Musée d’Orsay and just across the Seine. Tuileries.
We were never really forced to choose whether this should become our home permanently. Today, we, along with hordes of our fellow Americans, are considering such a move.
In a growing number of cases, this reason can be traced to a close source: the former president. Donald Trump. Or more precisely, how he tore apart America and our democracy that I have cherished during my nearly 80 years on this planet.
And as I began to ask more and more questions about this concern, my wife, Pamela, and I found a growing sense that we are not alone.
“That’s the first thing they say, ‘Get me out (of America),'” Adrian Leeds said. For a quarter of a century, through her real estate agency Adrian Leeds Group, she has mainly advised Americans who are considering moving to France on how to find accommodation. “But now there’s a real wave of young people saying, ‘We don’t want to raise our children in this country.’ We really want to give the best to our children. And we are very unhappy,’” she told me.
And the trend only seems to be accelerating. “We are up 100%, we have doubled our turnover since the beginning of the year, from January to March, over a year ago,” Leeds continued. “It’s happening so fast that the numbers are crazy. I hear it every day: “Take me out!” »
Of course, such discussions are not the only ones taking place in France. “As of 2020, we went from 5% of our U.S. clients to 70% today,” Patricia Casaburi, CEO of London-based Global Citizen Solutions, a high-end migration consultancy, said in a Zoom interview from Dubai. And more recently, the number of Americans “has only increased,” she added.
Certainly, there are reasons for Americans to move beyond the prospect of a second Trump presidency. “When there are mass shootings in schools, they just inspire people to act on something they’ve been considering for a while,” Casaburi said. But, she added, “certainly the political agenda influences people.”
Tony Kahn, a veteran former PBS and NPR producer, was sitting in a Mexico City hotel lobby earlier this month, making such calculations.
“Even as you ask me the question, I have mixed feelings about the extent to which America is my country,” Kahn said during a Zoom conversation between my perhaps not-so-temporary residence at Paris and Mexico. In Kahn’s youth, “Mexico welcomed us when America basically didn’t want us. It is reality. Mexico has always welcomed expatriates as long as they did not practice policies that got them into trouble in their own country,” he said.
In 1950, at the age of eight, Kahn and his entire family fled to Mexico when his father, famed Hollywood screenwriter Gordon Kahn, was summoned by the dreaded House Committee on Un-American Activities because of alleged links between communism and the film industry. He never ended up testifying.
His father was pursued almost until the end of his life, at age 62, by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Today, Kahn fears similar perils may be on the horizon.
“You feel a sense of security and a sense of belonging in Mexico,” Kahn continued. “I’m not afraid that a foreigner will go berserk (at me) there because I’m Jewish. At the same time, I am not possessed by the feeling that I must leave America right now before it is too late, but I am getting closer to it,” he said.
Over the past six months, he has made five trips to Mexico City with his wife to prepare a final decision.
There are also all kinds of escape possibilities. There are those who simply seek a refuge where they can work and live freely without the need to acquire a second nationality. In France, for example, there is a whole range of options, from the simple visa which allows you to stay beyond the 90 days out of 180 provided for by European rules, to the residence card (renewable every 10 years ).
In most countries, like France, taking the next step toward citizenship also means learning the language and customs.
Then there are “golden passports,” where in some countries broad categories or levels of investment can provide a fast track to citizenship, or a “talent passport” if you bring unique personal abilities.
“A lot of people now know what the Trump administration will be like, and they realize more than ever that the doors are open to living in another country and that it’s not as difficult as they thought,” said the immigration office based in Paris. lawyer Daniel Tostado told me.
Eight years ago, in the early days of Trump’s presidency, Skyler Schmanski was one of those Americans making a choice. He had come to France to study at a business school in Marseille. He now plans to stay.
“I started to experience the quality of life here,” he told me. “Whether it’s education or health care, but as I start to move into the next chapter of my life, in my 30s, these things start to seem more real,” he said. Today, with a wife and a career, and finally French nationality, he has no doubt about his choice.
Schmanski recalls two portfolio questions that were deeply compelling. “I split my head open at midnight when I stood up under a cabinet door that I didn’t know was open above me, saw blood, passed out, woke up and thought, “I should probably go to the hospital.” But as a good American, I said to myself: “No, I don’t want to go to the hospital.” I don’t want the $20,000 bill.
“But my girlfriend, now my wife, said to me, ‘Go to the hospital, it’s covered.’ And I left with a bill for 15 euros ($16). Wow 15 euros. To sew my head back together. So I said, ‘Wait a minute. Maybe there’s a little something in the system here.
Then there was higher education. “I went to business school, a really good master’s program in 15 months, for the equivalent of $15,000,” Schmanski said.
The most popular destinations right now for Americans looking for a way out appear to be Spain, Portugal and Greece, according to Casaburi of Global Citizens Solutions. She added that Italy has been a popular choice for a while, but suggested that the arrival of far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has caused some Americans to wonder whether they risk moving from the pan on the fire.
As for my wife and I, a permanent move to France would not be such a leap – simply, as would be the case for many others, it would be an extension of the time we spend there today.
But does the next generation of Americans also see their future elsewhere? “In the past, the conversations we had with the Americans were: ‘Should I go to Europe to retire? but now the pool of people has a very different profile: younger families,” Casaburi said.
“So at some point there is a cost to the country when you lose taxpayers, but also talented young professionals,” she added.
As Casaburi, herself a Brazilian who now lives in London, concludes, “Americans have suddenly found themselves in a position where they feel like they don’t know who their neighbors or family members are.”
“I don’t think it matters what side of the political spectrum you’re on. I think everyone is re-evaluating everything a little bit,” she said.
As for us, much will depend on the nature of Trump’s commitment to assuming the role of dictator for a day. As Pamela says, “it depends on whether we feel safe in the kind of country he promises – a country that is no longer a democracy.”
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