For the first time since 1957, more people are leaving the United States than arriving. In 2025 alone, an estimated 2.2 million people, including 180,000 citizens, left the country.
Renunciation data points in the same direction. Before 2009, fewer than 400 Americans gave up their citizenship each year. By 2024, that figure had reached 4,820. Among Americans already living abroad, nearly half are now seriously considering renouncing their citizenship.
These figures show a growing number of Americans migrating outwards for the first time in two decades. It also highlights how Americans are rethinking their views on citizenship, residency, and long-term security, a shift explored in greater depth in the Global Intelligence Unit’s latest briefing, From Destination to Departure.
What is driving this shift?
The motivations for this shift are structural. The rising cost of living and healthcare, unattainable housing, and tax compliance burdens are among the main factors driving this shift across generations.
Cost is the first factor. U.S. per capita healthcare spending reached $12,555, 2.5 times the baseline OECD average and 55% higher than Switzerland (the next-highest-spending country). For families weighing long-term healthcare access alongside other planning factors, this comparison is important.
Tax compliance is the second factor. The United States taxes its citizens on worldwide income regardless of where they live, and FATCA requires foreign financial institutions to report accounts held by US persons to the IRS. For high-net-worth individuals with international exposure, this shapes how they structure assets across borders.
The third factor is the impact of holding status in just one jurisdiction. The United States ranks 24th in the Global Citizen Solutions Global Atlas of Risk and Readiness Report, which evaluates jurisdictions based on structural risk and forward-looking readiness. The report finds that the most resilient economies are those with the institutional capacity to manage risks.
While the U.S. passport remains strong, holding legal status in more jurisdictions adds a layer of optionality that no single passport can provide on its own. High-net-worth Americans making long-term plans take this into account when considering jurisdictional diversification.
Citizenship as a Strategy
In the past, citizenship and residency were treated as inherited identity, shaped by where you and your parents were born and where you settled as an adult. This became the core location for building your life, planning your assets, and passing them on to the next generation.
However, the structural pressures highlighted above are prompting many internationally exposed Americans to rethink that view. What was once an inherited identity is increasingly being assessed strategically.
High-net-worth Americans are viewing citizenship the way they view their investments. A portfolio concentrated in one asset is undiversified, regardless of how stable that asset class is. This logic is now being applied to citizenship and residency.
As Laura Madrid, Research Lead at Global Citizen Solutions’ Global Intelligence Unit, explains:
“For most of the postwar era, American citizenship was treated as the risk-free benchmark, which made diversification feel unnecessary for many U.S. HNWIs. That assumption has weakened.”
Holding legal status in more than one jurisdiction reduces dependence and exposure to one regulatory, tax, or political environment. It provides access to different healthcare environments, education pathways, markets, and quality of life.
This is what jurisdictional diversification looks like in practice. It is not an immediate relocation decision, and it is not always permanent. It is a structured plan that allows high-net-worth individuals to live, hold assets, and operate in another jurisdiction if circumstances change.
For instance, Italy’s flat-tax regime for new residents allows these individuals to relocate part of their tax base without immediately giving up their U.S. base. This is a structure designed for optionality, not an exit.
The logic behind this strategy mirrors asset allocation: just as investment portfolios spread exposure across asset classes to manage risk, citizenship and residency are now being spread across jurisdictions to do the same. As the Global Atlas of Risk Readiness notes, resilience does not lie in avoiding risk, but in the capacity to manage it.
What Americans Are Actually Doing
An estimated 7 to 10 million Americans already hold dual citizenship, and as many as 30 million may qualify for ancestry-based European passports through countries such as Italy, Ireland, and Poland.
These are not citizens preparing to leave the U.S. immediately; they are citizens who already hold, or could quickly secure, the right to live and operate elsewhere.
This is optionality. Most are not relocating. They are securing residency or citizenship in additional jurisdictions while continuing to live in the United States, described as a “Plan B.” The objective is to remove the legal constraint of being tied to a single jurisdiction.
Furthermore, the design of the foreign residency programs attracting American interest also reflects this pattern. The Portugal Golden Visa, for example, allows clients to maintain their life in the United States while gradually building European residency. Most programs also extend status to spouses and children, and in some cases parents, which can appeal to HNWIs considering future planning and optionality.
Why Europe is the Top Destination
When clients start thinking about jurisdictional diversification, they consistently consider Europe. The reason for this has more to do with data than lifestyle and climate. European jurisdictions occupy seven of the top ten positions on the 2026 Global Atlas of Risk and Readiness Report.
These countries share a consistent set of structural characteristics, including regulatory reliability and sophisticated financial markets. These features support long-term planning, which is the essence of jurisdictional diversification.
Residency or citizenship in a European jurisdiction also offers access to multiple markets through the Schengen region. The diaspora data confirms that this is already happening. As of December 2023, more than 267,000 Americans held formal residence permits across Europe in countries like Germany, Portugal, and Spain.
Where Americans Are Building Optionality
For Americans considering Europe, factors such as program structure, family inclusion, tax, and physical presence requirements are deeply considered when choosing a country for optionality.
A handful of European jurisdictions have become the most common entry points for Americans. For example, Portugal offers flexibility and minimal physical presence, Italy combines faster processing with tax incentives, and the Greece Golden Visa program provides one of the lowest entry thresholds in Europe for those seeking a foothold without relocation.
The overall strategy is to hold a position across multiple jurisdictions that, taken together, reflect a coherent approach to optionality and diversification. As Laura Madrid explains:
“No serious investor holds 100% of their net worth in a single instrument, however blue-chip, and the same principle increasingly applies to citizenship and residency planning”
Rethinking Citizenship as Long-Term Assets
American mobility and the rise of jurisdictional diversification are not sudden or politically driven. This shift has been developing for decades and is now visible across renunciation data and global residency trends.
Rising healthcare costs, tax compliance, and the desire for a different quality of life are reshaping how some Americans think about where they hold legal status, structure their wealth, and plan for the future.
Citizenship and residency, which were once treated as identity, have now become strategic assets, part of how high-net-worth Americans plan for mobility, stability, and the next generation.