FACT CHECK: No, Huge Numbers of Americans Aren’t Leaving

The Wall Street Journal touched off a viral fake news story headlined “Americans Are Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers”. This was quickly turned into clickbait by the usual suspects.

More people are moving out of the U.S. than moving in for the first time since the Great Depression—a bad omen for the $38.8 trillion national debt – Fortune

Americans Are Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers. Here’s What’s Driving the Trend – People

Americans Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers Under Trump – The Daily Beast

The starting point for this is ‘negative net migration’. Trump achieved negative net migration which means the mass invasion is dying down.

That’s a great number.

It also means that the number of invaders has dropped that there are more people leaving than coming here.

The media is trying to spin this as a bad thing. And the Wall Street Journal cites various random statistics about Americans living and working abroad. That’s however very different from actually leaving America for good.

Here’s the ‘tell’ that the Wall Street Journal is being dishonest.

Last year, more Americans moved to Germany than Germans moved to America. The same was true in Ireland, which welcomed 10,000 people from the U.S. in 2025, about double those who came in 2024.

If there was any thought that this was a fleeting pandemic-era experiment of laptop nomads logging in from distant shores, data hints at its longevity. The U.S. government has a monthslong backlog of Americans asking to renounce their citizenship, either to secure a foreign passport or to avoid taxation of their earnings abroad. In 2024, requests jumped 48% and likely outpaced that in 2025, immigration firms say.

Americans are applying for British citizenship at the highest rate since records began in 2004: some 6,600 in the year to March 2025. They are securing Irish passports at a record pace: 31,825 in 2024, and an estimated 40,000 last year.

Quick. Spot the difference. The WSJ provides numbers of Americans living in Ireland and the UK, but a statistical increase in the number of Americans actually abandoning their citizenship. Why hide the figure?

Because the number, less than 5,000, is underwhelming.

The actual “record number” of Americans who are permanently leaving was 4,820 in 2024. Most of this can’t be blamed on Trump. There are no numbers for 2025 as of yet.

But here’s the actual breakdown, courtesy of Boundless, for the citizenship abandonment.

2020: The all-time high of 6,705 renunciations was recorded, likely driven by pandemic disruptions and ongoing tax compliance burdens.
2021–2023: Numbers dropped temporarily (2,426 in 2021) but returned above 5,000 in 2023, suggesting a persistent elevated trend.
2024: Nearly 5,000 individuals officially renounced their U.S. citizenship. Quarterly data shows notable fluctuations:
Q1: ~350 cases
Q2: Over 1,700
Q3: Peaked at more than 2,150
Q4: Dropped to around 600

There’s no record and it has nothing to do with Trump.

The Wall Street Journal puts together various stories about young ‘digital nomads’ working abroad and some elderly people trying to save money and invents a mass migration out of America over Trump. Another significant reason for Americans living abroad is that they’re not Americans. They’re foreigners with U.S. citizenship. Mexico is full of ‘Americans’ of Mexican origin who go back and forth. Ditto for a lot of other countries.

But the number of Americans leaving permanently is insignificant and not a record. The story is false.

What is happening is that the invasion is dying down and the WSJ hates that because it wants cheap labor and is trying to spin that as a renunciation of Trump’s strong immigration policies.