my mother continues to find toy cars and plastic dinosaurs and small ceramic animal figures and big beads in the corner of the garden where the sandbox used to be 35 years ago. (the cars are rather rusty)
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So, how would one go about starting to figure out where it might be possible to move away from the US? No dual citizenships here, and no eligibility by descent, most likely - both of our families have been in the states far many, many generations. I’m not sure it’s the best solution for us, but would like to start thinking about whether it’s even a possibility given -all this-.
Not retired, not super rich. Both highly educated, but neither of us is a superstar with a research program that’s likely to have us headhunted by major institutions. He has rudimentary Spanish, I have intermediate French and could muddle along in German with some work.
Frankly I can’t imagine anybody really wants Americans, or at least not as many as are likely to be trying to GTFO, but we are starting to think about it.
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Mexican temporary residency is easy to get, and can be converted to permanent after a few years or if you’re in a certain age group.
Peru and Ecuador have retirement visas with low financial criteria.
Panama actively recruits Americans. There are some big tax and health coverage perks for Americans.
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Personally I’m looking at golden and retirement visa programs, although I’m generally on the young side for the latter. South America looks easier than Europe…for a little bit it looked like I might be able to manage Italian citizenship through a great-grandparent, but a cousin who’s also looking thinks he renounced citizenship before our grandfather was born which would disqualify us so if I wanted to do that it would pretty much have to be through residency, and at that point I think I’m more likely to go south.
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I think if you’re open to places that offer easy temporary residency for a few years but without an easy path to permanent residency or citizenship then that opens up a lot more options. That’s basically my current situation and I know many people who have been here for 5-10 years just through repeatedly renewing their 6 month tourist visa, which is allowed. (I would not recommend this particular country though due to being far worse than the US currently on basically every human rights issue 
) That would also include countries that offer digital nomad visas which is quite a few.
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Yeah, that’s a consideration. Hopefully it doesn’t have to be forever.
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I’m not an expert, and at a very early part of the same journey but it seems very easy to get up to 4 years of temporary residence in Mexico with the option of permanent residence after that.
We are aren’t making any actual moves at the moment but want to be informed as we see how this plays out…
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I’ve been doing a research binge on this. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the main options are:
- Get a job offer abroad, from a company willing to sponsor you (quite difficult unless you’re in a high demand profession)
- Have enough $$ to be self-supporting (easier than you might think!), which can get you an initial visa and then either retire or job-hunt locally; many countries have retirement visas or “non-lucrative” / non-working options
- Work remotely (digital nomad visa) for an employer, or freelancing (can lead to permanent residency / citizenship in many countries) - this requires your employer to be OK with it, which might have tax implications for them
- Start a business (requires $$ to start, being able to cover your own living expenses)
- Buy property to get a “golden visa” and then retire or job hunt in that country (Cyprus, Malta) – some of these don’t even require you to live there, so you can do this as a kind of “backup” option
- Move somewhere that doesn’t require pre-planning (e.g., Albania gives US citizens a 1-year stay by default, in a true emergency you could bounce around a few places) – but again, this requires you to be able to support yourself without work
- Apply to a country that has a point-based general system (age, education, etc) and get in, then job hunt there
The threshholds for being considered “self-supporting” are lower than you might think. Mexico and Costa Rica are pretty inexpensive. Panama is extremely cheap but we ruled it out for not being LGBT-friendly. Cyprus or Malta is a good option if you want to buy property - the thresholds are approx 300k euro.
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I think a hugely important factor is to look at the laws and social conventions of each country to make sure it wouldn’t be just as bad, but in a different way than the US.
I can move back to Brazil, but abortion is illegal, protections for LGBTQ folks are thin, and there are major corruption/government issues.
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Yep. That’s definitely weighing heavily on us as we assess the options. Plenty of countries are wrestling with far-right populism. The US might be in crisis but like you said - it’s important to look at legal issues and standards-of-living (healthcare, public infrastructure, etc).
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Ever since I started looking into immigration to Australia, I keep getting videos about the giant spiders and I think I will focus on our neighbors to the frozen north instead.
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I feel like you already have gator experience, does that give you a head start in adapting? 
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I was fine with the crocs and sharks and terrifyingly muscles kangaroos.
The spiders are a hard no that the fair denizens of Australia in this forum had been keeping from me.
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This is what I keep coming back to. My family and loved ones are almost exclusively in this country and other than having a strong record of voting against the evil people and volunteering with organizations that support immigrants/environment/etc. I’m not going to be the first group targeted so right now my instincts are to stay and figure out how to fight harder for what I believe this country should be. While also knowing what backup options there are in case that calculation changes.
@Marcela have you considered strongly blue states in addition to other countries? We of course still have ICE running amok here but with much less support from local citizens, schools, governments etc. Additionally, our city and state level protections for things like abortion, Medicaid, and consumer protection are much better. I understand if that feels like definitely not enough to feel safe though.
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This is where I am currently sitting too, with the backup of dual citizenship so an easy out (I mean nothing about it is easy but also emigrating in an emergency is way more plausible and a hell of a lot cheaper). Protesting in particular seems infinitely safer in a place where the state/city/campus police are not deputized as ICE.
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Evidently I could get expedited Slovak citizenship with no language requirement, but moving to Eastern Europe doesn’t seem like that great a plan. And 0 members of my family have ever said “Sorry we moved to the US”. So.
But really, the Resistance won’t run itself. I’ve got a long, long list! I’m staying put.
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So many great answers already!
To make sure you aren’t going from the fire pan into the fire, I think the Democracy Index is useful for identifying potential countries (Democracy index - Our World in Data). Uruguay could be an interesting choice too that I haven’t seen mentioned here, if either of you can work remotely.
One other resource is to find a youtube video about the immigration process for countries you’re interested in. I know several countries in Europe are easier than you might think if you are self-employed or can afford real estate.
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That’s interesting that Japan is so high because I found out earlier this year that they can disappear foreigners who have been arrested for like 23 days before they’re required to contact the embassy. (The link below doesn’t say exactly that, the person who I read it from moved to Japan and was briefly involved in an investigation)
Which I guess doesn’t mean it’s not a democracy but did dramatically reduce my interest in ever going
https://japan.embassy.gov.au/tkyo/arrests.html
Thus continues my rude awakenings that America is really awful at some things but other places are just as bad or worse (see also how few countries have birthright citizenship)
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Yep. The main reason I’m looking is so I’ve got a head start if things go even further to hell, but at this point it makes more sense to stay…having the options narrowed down and the requirements for those options known still seems like a reasonable precaution though, especially since I’m on at least a couple lists as LGBTQ+ even if it’s one of the +s that no one ever remembers. But aside from that I’m a generally boring person with a generally boring extended family, and while my friend group is considerably less so, those in more danger are also further along in their planning (although a couple definitely just assumed ‘oh, Europe’ and didn’t actually look at the specifics and the direction of some of those specifics until very recently)
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s/neighbours/friends
some who have spare bedrooms in a pinch (only one bath though)
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